Orkhon inscriptions (Orkhon inscriptions, Orkhon inscriptions, Khöshöö Tsaidam monuments (also known as Khoshoo Tsaidam, Koshu-Tsaidam or Höshöö Caidam) or Kul Tigin steles (simplified Chinese: 阙特勤碑; traditional Chinese: 闕特勤碑; pinyin: Què tèqín bēi )) They are two monumental installations written by the Göktürks in the Old Turkic alphabet in the Orkhon Valley in Mongolia at the beginning of the 8th century. They were erected in honor of two Turkish princes Kül Tigin and his brother Bilge Kagan. Both Chinese and Old Turkish inscriptions describe the legendary origins of the Turks, the golden age of their history, their subjugation by the Chinese and their liberation by İlteriş Kağan. According to one source, the inscriptions contain "rhythmic and parallel passages" similar to those of epics. In the Old Turkish Alphabet, 38 letters are accepted academically and this pattern is generally used in the books. But there are more than 38 letters in this alphabet, these special letters are included in this font.

You can hear the wheels of imagination turning within this font - Grit Gothic, from Grit History™ B Series, by Baseline Fonts. Both highly stylized and very legible, the extreme height of this font can give even a goblin vertigo. Extended X heights create lowercase that adventurously reach up through extended shoulders and spines while persistent grunge warns of skinned knees that may result along the climb. It’s easy to envision children’s rallying cries in Grit Gothic, perfect for book titles, film titles, poster headlines, and any other epic that needs a strong font with a dark edge of mystery and wonder. This font is rife with personality, including large and daunting punctuation, whittled wood-look vertical bars that berate and argue with beveled bowls, ascenders that attempt to intimidate one another with their height variances, and tittles that bully one another, as they're a variety of context dependent sizes. Grit Gothic is available in Regular and Bold with full Greek-lettered foreign language support.

Homage to 70s phototype typography in 3 styles The AW Conqueror typeface family is a nod to the spirit of phototype typefaces and transfer lettering from the early 70’s. Founded by Ed Rondthaler, Photo-lettering catalogs swarmed with more daring typefaces than the others. Both transfer letter and phototitling have liberated the principle of letter-to-letter spacing, previously impossible with metal type. Phototype allowed operators to position millimeters, on the fly, letter after letter: words, sentences according to the specifications of the art director. AW Conqueror superfamily AW Conqueror Didot is part of a larger family, who include 4 others subfamilies with great potential: They’re but based on same structure, with some connection between them (width for example), to offer a great & easy titling toolbox to any designers, from skilful to beginner. Each of the members try their best to be different from the others because of their features. They should work harmoniously in contrast. Club des directeurs artistiques Prix 2010 European Design Awards 2011

This delicious font family takes its name from the tastiest of Piemonte’s specialities. It has been designed in collaboration with Turin-based calligrapher and artisan Andrea Tardivo. Piemonte soil provides the most delectable hazelnuts, which are the key to creating a mouth-watering chocolate spread called Gianduja. This popular delicacy has a rich graphic history, with lavishly designed packaging. We sought to infuse the sweetness and tradition of Turin’s confectionary into a new font family, reinterpreting Italian models from the first quarter of the last century. All fonts were crafted by hand on paper first and then digitised in a way that retains the handmade quality and aesthetic. This family blends the Turinese touch from the old chocolatiers and the beautifully printed foils they use to wrap each exquisite creation. The extensive display family contains; Gianduja Sans a geometric font based on examples found in Italian art deco era artworks. Gianduja Script has been handwritten with a speedball pen following the standards of “Bella Scrittura” and Gianduja Capitals is a decorative font inspired by the “liberty” lettering signs from Piemonte. To complete the suite we developed an inline Capitals version, a set of icons and decorative elements all with the same handmade characters to perfect partner with each character set.

Dederon Serif has been specifically designed for book setting. Preliminary sketches were drawn in 2004. Its inspiration – particularly its weight and width proportions – can be traced to the Liberta typeface from the TypoArt type foundry in former Eastern Germany. After a careful study of the model, the design of Dederon branched off into its own direction, finding its distinctive voice and becoming a wholly original type family. Dederon Serif kept most of the elements typical for the Old Style Roman lettering, such as the angle of the stress, the medium x-height, and lower contrast. In large sizes, the typical shapes of the letters stand out – the calligraphic feel characteristic for the Czech typefaces by Oldrich Menhart, the unusual serifs hinting at the angle of the pen, the shapes of the stems, or the terminals of dots and ears. Upon finishing the serif version, a Serif-serif variant called Dederon Serif was added. The construction principles are also derived from the Old Style Roman model, which lends the lettering its open, humanist feel. Yet the design also conforms to the rules of the modern Serif serif. Most characteristics of Dederon Serif match the serif version – the weight of individual cuts, the width proportions, x-height, ascenders' and descenders' length, and the slope of the italics. Each version of Dederon Open Type Std contains the standard Western Latin character set and the Central European characters; a number of basic and accented ligatures, small caps; old style, small caps and caps, table, fraction and superscript numerals; expert glyphs and alternative characters. This brings the total to a comfortable 820 glyphs per weight, permitting truly professional use in the most demanding projects.

Dederon Serif has been specifically designed for book setting. Preliminary sketches were drawn in 2004. Its inspiration — particularly its weight and width proportions — can be traced to the Liberta typeface from the TypoArt type foundry in former Eastern Germany. After a careful study of the model, the design of Dederon branched off into its own direction, finding its distinctive voice and becoming a wholly original type family. Dederon Serif kept most of the elements typical for the Old Style Roman lettering, such as the angle of the stress, the medium x-height, and lower contrast. In large sizes, the typical shapes of the letters stand out — the calligraphic feel characteristic for the Czech typefaces by Oldrich Menhart, the unusual serifs hinting at the angle of the pen, the shapes of the stems, or the terminals of dots and ears. Upon finishing the serif version, a sans-serif variant called Dederon Sans was added. The construction principles are also derived from the Old Style Roman model, which lends the lettering its open, humanist feel. Yet the design also conforms to the rules of the modern sans serif. Most characteristics of Dederon Sans match the serif version — the weight of individual cuts, the width proportions, x-height, ascenders' and descenders' length, and the slope of the italics. Each version of Dederon Open Type Std contains the standard Western Latin character set and the Central European characters; a number of basic and accented ligatures, small caps; old style, small caps and caps, table, fraction and superscript numerals; expert glyphs and alternative characters. This brings the total to a comfortable 820 glyphs per weight

Strings vibrating against wood. Counterpoints. Strong beated rhythms and smooth flexible melodies. Repetitive sequences and syncopations. Sweeps and slides. Folk and tradition. That's how Dobro sounds. Inspired by the spirit of bluegrass music and the aesthetic of its wood type gig posters,this typeface explores certain concepts of rhythm and seeks to translate a piece of this universe into writing. Meant to be used in large sizes, Dobro is a 6-font set designed to work nicely together. It comes in 4 different weights, one color font with miscellaneous and connectors, plus frames and borders that pay tribute to vintage wood type catalogues. As an old company motto used to say: "Dobro means good in any language!" ––––––––––––––––––– IMPORTANT INFO ––––––––––––––––––– When you license Dobro you will download a pack with OpenType fonts but also a Color Font version of Dobro Drunk. (To use color fonts Photoshop CC 2017 /2018, Illustrator CC 2018 or QuarkXpress 2018 is required). If you create outlines in illustrator you can also modify the colors! Dobro Drunk BW OTF font (works like any font but is black & white.) Web files are only black and white until browsers support color fonts.

The Lamia font is inspired by the work of the most famous calligrapher of the Basque Country, Jose Francisco de Iturzaeta Eizaguirre (Getaria1788-Madrid 1853). His writing method was compulsory in Spanish schools since 1835. His "unpolished Spanish font" tried to be more effective than the more commercial English version by avoiding embellishments and excessive rear tearing. More akin with the liberal values imported by the French, his offerings sought uniformity, speed and efficiency to ensure that those in the less-favored echelons of society had an effective communication tool. From his "general collection of characters of European Letters" published in Madrid in 1833, we have chosen the "lower case pancilla reformed" represented in one of the prints. We have tried to reinterpret it by keeping its essence but also ensuring that it is viable for potential contemporary uses which, thanks to its good readability and effectiveness in longer texts, basically means as a decorative or display font. The upper case was generated using the lower case as a reference.

Frescito is a modern sans-serif typeface that embodies a fresh, cool, and street-smart aesthetic. Designed to be both balanced and versatile, its clear and legible monoline style is designed for branding and advertising in editorial and digital design. The Frescito font family comes in the five classic weights: Thin, Light, Medium, Bold, and Black, along with a Variable font for ultimate flexibility and customization, as well as Italics. Inspired by the energetic spirit of the city and its vibration, Mans Greback set out to create a typeface that would stand out against vivid moment; a type that would work in a traditional café just as well as for contemporary merchandise. The result is a font that combines the best of both worlds: an air of freshness and modernity with an unpretentious, timeless and classy appeal. The font is built with advanced OpenType functionality and has a guaranteed top-notch quality, containing stylistic and contextual alternates, ligatures, and more features; all to give you full control and customizability. It has extensive lingual support, covering all Latin-based languages, from Northern Europe to South Africa, from America to South-East Asia. It contains all characters and symbols you'll ever need, including all punctuation and numbers.

The Black Puma typeface was inspired by the rock beats and the honest spirit of today's indie music scene. Just as evolving garage bands', Black Puma’s strength lies in its fresh and brave approach: to playfully experiment and proudly take its imperfections as long as they are needed to stay real and honest. Black Puma's aim is to entertain, while expressing a strong human touch through its handmade and creatively assembled characters. Black Puma's varying rounded and edgy shapes create a vibrating yet coherent visual, which carries a positive, playful atmosphere. Its irregularities and extra bold characters empower Black Puma to have great and touching visual impact, which make it stand out of the mass flow of information delivered in the information society we live today. Black Puma font - with its 370 glyphs - includes all the accented characters of the Latin alphabet, and also comes with a couple of alternate characters (stylistic and contextual) to play around with. And, above all - as mentioned before - it includes its essence: the young spirit. So come, play around and have fun with Black Puma. Use it to create expressive, passionate posters, flyers and art work full of spirit for the awaiting young-minded public. You can find more artwork using Black Puma under the "Gallery" tab above.

Esfand is a modern Sans Serif font family in three weights, Light, Medium and Bold.The Esfand innovation is a contribution to the modernisation of Arabic typography; gives the Arabic font letters real typographic arrangement and provides for more typographic flexibility. Esfand supports Arabic, Persian, and Urdu and includes proportional and tabular numerals for the supported languages. The Esfand Font family is available in Three weights; Light, Medium and Bold. Its intuitive design arrangement fulfills the following needs: - It is precisely crafted for use in electronic and print media. Esfand is not based on any pre-digital typefaces and it is not a revival. Rather, its forms were created with today’s ever-changing technology in mind. - Esfand is suitable for multiple applications, and gives the widest potential for acceptability. - It is extremely legible not only in its small sizes, but also when the type is filtered or skewed, e.g., in Photoshop or Illustrator. Esfand's simplified forms may be artificially oblique with InDesign or Illustrator, without any degradation of its quality for the effected text. - Esfand is an eye-catching and classy typographic image that was developed for multiple languages use and writing conventions. - Esfand uses the very highest degree of geometric clarity along with the necessary amount of calligraphic references. The Esfand typeface is of a high vibration that is finely balance between calligraphic tradition and the contemporary sans serif aesthetic commonly seen in Latin typography.

Casagrande Collection has been designed in 2020 by the Italiantype Team (Manuel Alvaro, Valentino Coppi and Mario De Libero), working in close collaboration with Italian lettering artist, illustrator and calligrapher Alberto Casagrande, with help from the Zetafonts Team (Francesco Canovaro, Andrea Tartarelli and Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini). The goal of the project was to use as inspiration Alberto's colorful, vintage themed digital illustration style to develop a suite of closely related typefaces that, used together, would allow designers to replicate the nostalgic charme of Italian poster and product design from the thirties and the forties. Two color overprints, coarse dithering, handmade calligraphy, reminiscences of art deco, hints of modernism and pop culture references: all this and more mixed in a exuberant and playful collection, created with illustrators, poster artists and book cover designers in mind. The final product is 24-font package with six display families with styles varying from the thirties-inspired Antifascista (3 weights + 3 dithering weights) and Deco (3 weights + 3 inline weights), to the modernist Casabau (5 weights), to the geometric Grind (4 widths), to the vintage elegance of the two script families, Reclame and Casatiello. The collection is complemented by a two-color icon set font, Casagrande Ornaments, allowing any designer to easily explore the creative possibilities of this incredibly powerful creative collection. Please Note: Casagrande Antifascista Ombra simulates fine dithering and may be processor intensive for some older computers. Use Casagrande Antifascista if it slows down your system.

Frescito is a modern sans-serif typeface that embodies a fresh, cool, and street-smart aesthetic. Designed to be both balanced and versatile, its clear and legible monoline style is designed for branding and advertising in editorial and digital design. Only one font file, but the file contains multiple styles. Use the sliders in Illustrator, Photoshop or InDesign to manually set any weight and width. This gives you not only the predefined styles, but instead more than a thousand ways to customize the type to the exact look your project requires. More info about Variable Fonts: https://mansgreback.com/variable-fonts Inspired by the energetic spirit of the city and its vibration, Mans Greback set out to create a typeface that would stand out against vivid moment; a type that would work in a traditional café just as well as for contemporary merchandise. The result is a font that combines the best of both worlds: an air of freshness and modernity with an unpretentious, timeless and classy appeal. The font is built with advanced OpenType functionality and has a guaranteed top-notch quality, containing stylistic and contextual alternates, ligatures, and more features; all to give you full control and customizability. It has extensive lingual support, covering all Latin-based languages, from Northern Europe to South Africa, from America to South-East Asia. It contains all characters and symbols you'll ever need, including all punctuation and numbers.

Frutiger Capitalis Regular and Outline belong to the group of typefaces for the Linotype’s Type Before Gutenberg project. However, they are not based on direct historical sources. At first glance, they may seem related to the roman type Capitalis Monumentalis, but upon closer examination, the fonts reveal a vitality unknown to the characters the Romans etched in stone. Frutiger confesses that creating Capitalis was “a liberation”. After working on so many sophisticated and meticulously designed typefaces, Frutiger Capitalis was a breath of fresh air. Stylistically, Frutiger Capitalis Outline forms a bridge to Frutiger Capitalis Signs, a whole universe of its own. Frutiger Capitalis Signs is a personal cosmos of symbols, many are immediately “legible”, others leave room for interpretation. Some of the symbols are the product of Frutiger’s imagination, such as his “Life Signs” — soft, hand drawn figures whose lines have no apparent beginning or end, creating both interior and exterior spaces, new forms emerging at each glance. These contoured drawings have accompanied Frutiger throughout his professional life, a fantasy garden which has provided an important balance to his many years of disciplined typeface design. Yet he does not consider himself an artist. Frutiger says he simply “wants to tell stories, to draw thin lines, create contours of signs; that is my style”.

The Bonyad font family, designed by Naghi Naghashian, was developed considering specific research and analysis on Arabic characters and definition of their structure. Bonyad is a modern Sans Serif font family.The Bonyad innovation is a contribution to modernisation of Arabic typography; gives the Arabic font letters real typographic arrangement and provides for more typographic flexibility. Bonyad supports Arabic, Persian, and Urdu and includes proportional and tabular numerals for the supported languages. The Bonyad Font family is available in six weights; Thin, Light, Regular, Demi Bold, Bold and Heavy. Its intuitive design arrangement fulfills the following needs: It is precisely crafted for use in electronic and print media. Bonyad is not based on any pre-digital typefaces and it is not a revival. Rather, its forms were created with today’s ever-changing technology in mind. Bonyad is suitable for multiple applications, and gives the widest potential for acceptability. It is extremely legible not only in its small sizes, but also when the type is filtered or skewed, e.g., in Photoshop or Illustrator. Bonyad's simplified forms may be artificially oblique with InDesign or Illustrator, without any degradation of its quality for the effected text. Bonyad is an eye-catching and classy typographic image that developed for multiple languages and writing conventions. Bonyad uses the very highest degree of geometric clarity along with the necessary amount of calligraphic references. The Bonyad typeface is of a high vibration that is finely balance between calligraphic tradition and the contemporary sans serif aesthetic commonly seen in Latin typography.

Waba Pronounced ‘Vah-bah’, is a font family that I designed. The name comes from a historical variation on the Estonian word ‘vaba’ – meaning ‘free’, or 'at liberty'. Back in 2017 I visited the Estonian Print & Paper Museum in Tartu to see its great collection of type (well worth a visit!). While I was there I saw some big woodcut blocks of Reklameschrift Herold - a super Art Nouveau/Jugendstil style display font. The Print & Paper Museum's collection covers both Latin and Cyrillic faces and as a foreigner in these parts I'm kind of fascinated by the exoticism of Cyrillic. How it is different but the same to the Latin letters I take for granted (as a humble Englander – no excuses). Not to mention, Jugendstil with its imitation of natural form, reverse-weights and looping-delicious curves (like you've left the window open all summer and the garden plants are climbing in). This mix of Jugendstil, Cyrillic letters and the beautiful historical border town of Tartu inspired me to start drawing Waba. Trimming the serifs from Herold, simplifying those angles and expanding the category of weights, then taking look at the magical logic of Berthold Block and doing a few things that just seemed right at the time – Waba is a bit of love letter to Estonia, the Baltics and the visual history of Eastern Europe. Waba Monogram Waba also contains a monogram face, which allows you to create any monogramming latin and cyrillic. Simply type out your 2-3-4 characters in Waba Monogram, making sure Contextual Alternates is turned on them voila! Monograms can be customised manually using the OpenType select-pop-up in Adobe. Also included are a few Discretionary Ligatures for Mc, De, Von etc. Monograms work best when Contextual Alternates is turned on.

Cairoli was originally cast by Italian foundry Nebiolo in 1928, as a license of a design by Wagner & Schmidt, known as Neue moderne Grotesk. Its solid grotesque design (later developed as Aurora by Weber and Akzidenz-Grotesk by Haas) was extremely successful: it anticipated the versatility of sans serif superfamilies thanks to its range of weights and widths, while still retaining some eccentricities from end-of the century lead and wood type. In 2020 the Italiantype team directed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini and Mario De Libero decided to produce a revival of Cairoli, extending the original weight and width range and developing both a faithful Classic version and a Now variant. The Cairoli Classic family keeps the original low x-height range, very display-oriented, and normalizes the design while emphasizing the original peculiarities like the hook cuts in curved letters, the high-waisted uppercase R and the squared ovals of the letterforms. Cairoli Now is developed with an higher x-height, more suited for text and digital use, and adds to the original design deeper ink-traps and round punctuation, while slightly correcting the curves for a more contemporary look. Born as an exercise in subtlety and love for lost letterforms, Cairoli stands, like its lead ancestor from a century ago, at the crossroads between artsy craftsmanship and industrial needs. Its deviations from the norm are small enough to give it personality without affecting readability, and the expanded weight and width range make it into a workhorse superfamily with open type features (alternates, stylistic sets, positional numbers) and coverage of over two hundred languages using the latin extended alphabet.

Cairoli was originally cast by Italian foundry Nebiolo in 1928, as a license of a design by Wagner & Schmidt, known as Neue moderne Grotesk. Its solid grotesque design (later developed as Aurora by Weber and Akzidenz-Grotesk by Haas) was extremely successful: it anticipated the versatility of sans serif superfamilies thanks to its range of weights and widths, while still retaining some eccentricities from end-of the century lead and wood type. In 2020 the Italiantype team directed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini and Mario De Libero decided to produce a revival of Cairoli, extending the original weight and width range and developing both a faithful Classic version and a Now variant. The Cairoli Classic family keeps the original low x-height range, very display-oriented, and normalizes the design while emphasizing the original peculiarities like the hook cuts in curved letters, the high-waisted uppercase R and the squared ovals of the letterforms. Cairoli Now is developed with an higher x-height, more suited for text and digital use, and adds to the original design deeper ink-traps and round punctuation, while slightly correcting the curves for a more contemporary look. Born as an exercise in subtlety and love for lost letterforms, Cairoli stands, like its lead ancestor from a century ago, at the crossroads between artsy craftsmanship and industrial needs. Its deviations from the norm are small enough to give it personality without affecting readability, and the expanded weight and width range make it into a workhorse superfamily with open type features (alternates, stylistic sets, positional numbers) and coverage of over two hundred languages using the latin extended alphabet.

Zira is a playful hand-drawn font family designed by Daniel Bak (Artcity). It is available in three handy weights: regular, bold and screaming. It contains international language accent marks and diacriticals, including Greek and Cyrillic. Zira can be considered as smoothed serif version of Cornelius font. Zira as Cornelius as well is a chimpanzee character in the novel and movie series Planet of the Apes. Dr. Zira is a chimpanzee psychologist and veterinarian, who specializes in the study of humans, in the novel and subsequent movie series Planet of the Apes. Zira was played in the first three Apes movies by actress Kim Hunter. Unique among the Apes characters, Zira has blue eyes. Zira is the fiancée (later wife) of Cornelius, and both are ultimately responsible to the Minister of Science, Dr. Zaius. Zira's character and role are essentially the same in both the novel and the movies, though some story details differ. Her work in each involves both working with humans under laboratory conditions (e.g. learning and behavioural experiments), and working on them physically (lobotomy and other brain surgeries, vivisection, physical endurance and tolerance experiments, and subsequent autopsies). Zira is an outspoken liberal by nature, deploring war and militancy (and despising the gorillas, who seem to make both a way of life), and eager to seek and develop intelligence anywhere it can be found. Zira literally stands for her principles - or refuses to stand, as the case may be.

The Ahoura font family, designed by Naghi Naghashian, was developed considering specific research and analysis on Arabic characters and definition of their structure. The Ahoura innovation is a contribution to modernisation of Arabic typography; gives the Arabic font letters real typographic arrangement and provides for more typographic flexibility. This step was necessary after more than two hundred years of relative stagnation in Arabic font design. Ahoura supports Arabic, Persian, and Urdu and includes proportional and tabular numerals for the supported languages. The Ahoura Font family is available in three weights; Light, Regular and Bold. Each has two different styles-- normal and italic. Ahoura is the first real italic Arabic typeface known until now and its intuitive design arrangement fulfils the following needs: - It is precisely crafted for use in electronic media and it fulfils the demands of electronic communication. Ahoura is not based on any pre-digital typefaces and it is not a revival. Rather, its forms were created with today’s ever-changing technology in mind. - Ahoura is suitable for multiple applications, and gives the widest potential for acceptability. - It is extremely legible not only in its small sizes, but also when the type is filtered or skewed, e.g., in Photoshop or Illustrator. Ahoura's simplified forms may be artificially obliqued with In Design or Illustrator, without any degradation of its quality for the effected text. - Ahoura is an eye-catching and classy typographic image that developed for multiple languages and writing conventions. - Ahoura uses the very highest degree of geometric clarity along with the necessary amount of calligraphic references. The Ahoura typeface is of a high vibration that is finely balance between calligraphic tradition and the contemporary sans serif aesthetic commonly seen in Latin typography.

Smallstep - One geometric sans serif with a free spirit. If we presume that geometric typefaces play with the idea of what typography would look like in the future when all unnecessary elements would disappear, than most of their designers seem to envision the future in a rather metropolisque kind of way. We love geometric faces, but the cold and heartless feelings that most of them leave is just not our cup of tea. That is why we are happy to bring some optimism in that genre with our new typeface. We called it Smallstep. Smallstep is a typeface that follows the traditions of classic geometric sans serifs like “Futura”, but is at the same time friendly and whimsical. We took the liberty to deviate from the standard sans serif glyphs while drawing some characters (such as ”a” and ”r” ), others (“w” “k”) are completely redesigned. Probably the biggest trademark of this typeface is the way vertical lines in most lower case characters are “cut” so they end in a 60 degree angle. Smallstep is over all a expressive face, which means it brings some emotions to your design and feelings in itself, and should be used accordingly. Other than that, it is suitable for both headline and body text, print and web. So what kind of name is “Smallstep”? We view the type design process as a form of evolution: There can be no typeface that differs drastically from the current standards, since its characters would be unrecognizable and thus unreadable. But at the same time there are hundreds of faces that differ a little, and still manage to make a difference by moving with small steps towards better and more refined looks. Smallstep consist of 4 weights, that cover all the features, that are expected of a modern Opentype face: kerning pairs, ligatures, true italics and alternative characters, plus a set of symbols, that will help you start off your designs more easily.

Marit Otto about C-Nation: The building typeface. Although the 70ties were very liberating and progressive, still girls played mainly with dolls and sweet things and boys with all kinds of challenging stuff. They did all sorts of basic scientific experiments in mini labs and of course built cool things with Meccano building sets. As a girl I was perfectly happy with the toys I had access to. But at the same time I was very curious about all the adventure toys and discoveries my brother did. It also made me wonder why the grown up people thought that our world could be separated so easily by separating our toys in pink and blue sections. At this day of age Meccano is probably hopelessly old fashioned and far to manual. Children of today are fed by fast images and cool animations on screen, they learn, play, communicate and relax in the same space, the digital space. The special feature of Meccano was that even though it was very basic there was the promise you could create anything. It might even contribute to a logical mind. The typeface I designed refers to the Meccano feel. It is a creative typeface. A bit masculine and bold looking perhaps but after the first impression a subtle and refined female touch is revealed. It has links to architecture and associations with metal constructions like ‘The Eiffel Tower’ and (old railway) bridges. I am convinced that we all think of that as very charming man-made objects.

Released on the occasion of the 2012 London Olympics, Olympukes 2012 was a new set of pictograms telling the ‘real’ story of the Olympics and extending the unofficial project that began in 2004. The occasion of the London games provided an opportunity to revisit the complex contradictions of the modern Olympics and to acknowledge the geopolitical shifts of the intervening eight years. The 2012 games arrived at a time of great economic and political uncertainty for the nation and Europe. Greece – the host of the 2004 games – was now located at Ground Zero of a disintegrating Eurozone and the United Kingdom was two years into a programme of austerity enacted by the coalition government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. Given that the previous London Olympics had been held in 1948, in a climate of recovery and austerity after a devastating World War (1948’s Olympiad was dubbed the ‘Austerity Games’) there was a sick irony to the 2012 games' arrival. The suppression of human rights in order to deliver the perfect games for PRoC’s Beijing games shocked no-one and yet, in London, the security measures seemed grossly excessive. Then again, in a country with an estimated 1.8 million cctv cameras, perhaps we shouldn’t have been so surprised. Another aspect of the Olympics that returned for 2012 was the unfettered commercialism – if you think the Games are about pure sport, about noble human endeavour, think again. Please note that Barnbrook Fonts is in no way affiliated with, or has received any endorsement from, the International Olympic Committee, the organising committees of the Olympic Games, or any national Olympic committee.

Etrusco Now is the revival of a lead typeface originally cast in lead by Italian foundry Nebiolo in the early 1920s. Heavily inspired by the design of the Medium weight of Schelter & Giesecke's Grotesk, Etrusco was, like Cairoli, an early precursor of the modernist grotesque superfamilies: a solid, multi-purpose "work-horse" typeface family that could solve a wide range of design problems with its range of widths and weights. When designing the new incarnation of Nebiolo's Etrusco, the Italiantype team directed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini and Mario de Libero decided to extend the original weight and width range to keep this "superfamily" approach. Etrusco Now has twenty-one styles widths in three widths of seven weights each, with matching italics; the original weights for the typeface have been collected in the Etrusco Classic subfamily. Etrusco Now new widths allowed the team to include in the design many nods and homages to other vintage classics of Nebiolo. The lighter weights of the normal width have been heavily influenced by the modernist look of Recta, while the heavy condensed and compressed widths refer to the black vertical texture of Aldo Novarese's Metropol. This infuses the typeface with a slightly vintage mood, making Etrusco at the same time warmly familiar and unexpected to eyes accustomed to the formal and cold look of late modernist grotesques like Helvetica. Contemporary but rich in slight historical quirks, Etrusco Now is perfect for any editorial and branding project that aims to be different in a subtle way. Etrusco Now's deviations from the norm are small enough to give it personality without affecting readability, while its wide range of open type features (alternates, stylistic sets, positional numbers) and language coverage make it a problem solver for any situation. Like its cousin Cairoli, Etrusco is born out of love for lost letterforms and stands like its lead ancestor from a century ago, at the crossroads between artsy craftsmanship and industrial needs.

Cocogoose Pro Narrows has been completely re-engineered in 2020 to include extra features and technologies. A darkmode weight range has been added to the whole family, to keep consistency of effect when the typeface is used in reverse on the web and in dark mode interfaces. Also, a new Ultra Compressed subfamily has been developed for display usage. Designed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini in 2013, Cocogoose was first expanded in 2015 with the help of Francesco Canovaro who co-designed the decorative display weights and Andrea Tartarelli who developed the condensed widths. In 2020 a full redesign of the typeface has been published: Cocogoose Pro now includes new widths, weights, open type features and characters, thanks to the help of Mario De Libero. Influenced by vernacular sign-painting and modernist ideals, Cocogoose is drawn on a classic geometric sans skeleton, softened by rounded corners and slight visual corrections. Its very low contrast, dark colour and tall x-height make it a solid choice for all designers looking for a powerful display typeface for logos, headings and vintage-inspired branding. The tall x-height makes texts set in Cocogoose very readable even at small sizes, while the bold regular weight allows for maximum impact when used as a branding, signage or decorative typeface. Cocogoose Pro was designed as a highly reliable tool for design problem solving, and given all the features a graphic designer needs, starting from its wide range of widths and weights. Its 2000+ latin, cyrillic and greek characters make sure it covers over 200 languages worldwide, while its comprehensive set of open type features allows faultless typesetting thanks to small capitals, positional numbers & case sensitive forms. A wide range of alternate letterforms, developed along nine different stylistic sets, gives you an extra level of design fine-tuning. The layerable and colour-ready display variants include inline, outline, shadow and a letterpress version that can simulate the effect of old print, also thanks to programmed randomization of its letters.

When you hear that name, you likely ask yourself, ‘why?!’ I did too, but the number of requests could not be ignored. Once I finally decided to move forward with it, the only way to solve the offering would be to adhere to the same theme of indulgence, I planned for the same number of optical weights AND Italics. Yeah, italic stencils… ok, why not? It’s not a new concept. One thing to note and a creative liberty I assumed during the design. Lust Stencil would not be just a redaction or removal of stress to produce a quick stencil. To do that, would just be a cheap solution. Strokes had to resolve themselves correctly and/or uniquely to the concept of the stencil format. And, it had to be heftier. For it it to look correctly, it needed about 8% additional mass to the strokes for it to retain the effervescent flow of the curves and the resolute scalloped lachrymals. The Lust Collection is the culmination of 5 years of exploration and development, and I am very excited to share it with everyone. When the original Lust was first conceived in 2010 and released a year and half later, I had planned for a Script and a Sans to accompany it. The Script was released about a year later, but I paused the Sans. The primary reason was the amount of feedback and requests I was receiving for alternate versions, expansions, and ‘hey, have you considered making?’ and so on. I listen to my customers and what they are needing… and besides, I was stalling with the Sans. Like Optima and other earlier high-contrast sans, they are difficult to deliver responsibly without suffering from ill-conceived excess or timidity. The new Lust Collection aggregates all of that past customer feedback and distills it into 6 separate families, each adhering to the original Lust precept of exercises in indulgence and each based in large part on the original 2010 exemplars produced for Lust. I just hate that it took so long to deliver, but better right, than rushed, I imagine. It would have taken even longer if not for font engineer and designer, Potch Auacherdkul. Thanks Potch.

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.

Discover Cocogoose Pro Narrow Weights! Designed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini in 2013, Cocogoose was first expanded in 2015 with the help of Francesco Canovaro who co-designed the decorative display weights and Andrea Tartarelli who developed the condensed widths. In 2020 a full redesign of the typeface has been published: Cocogoose Pro now includes new widths, weights, open type features and characters, thanks to the help of Mario De Libero. Influenced by vernacular sign-painting and modernist ideals, Cocogoose is drawn on a classic geometric sans skeleton, softened by rounded corners and slight visual corrections. Its very low contrast, dark color and tall x-height make it a solid choice for all designers looking for a powerful display typeface for logos, headings and vintage-inspired branding. The tall x-height makes texts set in Cocogoose very readable even at small sizes, while the bold regular weight allows for maximum impact when used as a branding, signage or decorative typeface. Cocogoose Pro was designed as a highly reliable tool for design problem solving, and given all the features a graphic designer needs, starting from its wide range of widths and weights. Its 2000+ latin, cyrillic and greek characters make sure it covers over 200 languages worldwide, while its comprehensive set of open type features allows faultless typesetting thanks to small capitals, positional numbers & case sensitive forms. A wide range of alternate letterforms, developed along nine different stylistic sets, gives you an extra level of design fine-tuning. The layerable and color-ready display variants include inline, outline, shadow and a letterpress version that can simulate the effect of old print, also thanks to programmed randomization of its letters. Cocogoose Pro has been completely re-engineered in 2020 to include extra features and technologies. A variable font version allows you to fine tune precisely the appearance of the text while minimizing download size on the web. A darkmode weight range has been added to the whole family, to keep consistency of effect when the typeface is used in reverse on the web and in dark mode interfaces. Also, a new text subfamily has been developed for body text usage, to keep the look and feel of Cocogoose while maximizing readability on screen and on the printed page.

Before Bodoni, there was Didot. With the publication by Francois Ambroise Didot of Paris in 1784 of his prospectus for Tasso’s La Gerusalemme Liberata, the rococo typographical style of Fournier de Jeune was replaced with a spartan, neo-classical style that John Baskerville pioneered. The typeface Didot used for this work was of Didot’s own creation and is considered by both G. Dowding and P. Meggs to be the first modern face. Three years later, Bodoni of Parma is using a very similar face. Just as Bodoni’s typeface evolved over time, so did that of the Didot family. The eldest son of Francois Ambroise Didot, Pierre, ran the printing office; and Firmin ran the typefoundry. Pierre used the flattened, wove paper, again pioneered by Baskerville, to permit a more accurate impression and allow the use of more delicate letterforms. Firmin took full advantage of the improved paper by further refining the typeface introduced by his father. The printing of Racine’s Oeuvres in 1801 (seen in our gallery image #2) shows the symbiotic results of their efforts, especially in the marked increase in the sharpness of the serifs when compared to their owns works of only six years earlier. It has been suggested that one reason Bodoni achieved greater popularity than Didot is the thinner hairlines of Didot were more fragile when cast in metal type and thus more expensive for printers to use than Bodoni. This ceased to be a problem with the advent of phototypesetting, opening the door for a renewed interest in the work of the Didot family and especially that of Firmin Didot. Although further refinements in the Didot typeface were to come (notably the lower case ‘g’ shown in 1819), we have chosen 1801 as the nominal basis for our presentation of HiH Firmin Didot. We like the thick-thin circumflex that replaced the evenly-stroked version of 1795, possible only with the flatter wove paper. We like the unusual coat-hanger cedilla. We like the organic, leaf-like tail of the ‘Q.’ We like the strange, little number ‘2’ and the wonderfully assertive ‘4.’ And we like the distinctive and delightful awkwardness of the double-v (w). Please note that we have provided alternative versions of the upper and lower case w that are slightly more conventional than the original designs. Personally, I find the moderns (often called Didones) hard on the eyes in extended blocks of text. That does not stop me from enjoying their cold, crisp clarity. They represent the Age of Reason and the power of man’s intellect, while reflecting also its limitations. In the title pages set by Bodoni, Bulmer and Didot, I see the spare beauty of a winter landscape. That appeals to a New Englander like myself. Another aspect that appeals to me is setting a page in HiH Firmin Didot and watching people try to figure out what typeface it is. It looks a lot like Bodoni, but it isn't!