It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that these letter shapes are familiar. They have the unmistakable color and weight of Cooper Black, Oswald Cooper's most famous typeface from 1921. What should be a surprise is that these letters are actually from George Auriol's Robur Noir (or Robur Black), published in France circa 1909 by the Peignot foundry as a bolder, solid counterpart to its popular Auriol typeface (1901). This face precedes Cooper Black by a dozen of years and a whole Great War. Cooper Black has always been a bit of a strange typographical apparition to anyone who tried to explain its original purpose, instant popularity in the 1920s, and major revival in the late 1960s. BB&S and Oswald Cooper PR aside, it is quite evident that the majority of Cooper Black's forms did not evolve from Cooper Old Style, as its originators claimed. And the claim that it collected various Art Nouveau elements is of course too ambiguous to be questioned. But when compared with Robur Noir, the "elements" in question can hardly be debated. The chronology of this "machine age" ad face in metal is amusing and stands as somewhat of a general index of post-Great War global industrial competition: - 1901: Peignot releases Auriol, based on the handwriting of George Auriol (the "quintessential Art Nouveau designer," according to Steven Heller and Louise Fili), and it becomes very popular. - 1909-1912: Peignot releases the Robur family of faces. The eight styles released are Robur Noir and its italic, a condensed version called Robur Noir Allongée (Elongated) and its italic, an outline version called Clair De Lune and its condensed/elongated, a lined/striped version called Robur Tigre, and its condensed/elongated counterpart. - 1914 to 1918: World War One uses up economies on both sides of the Atlantic, claims Georges Peignot with a bullet to the forehead, and non-war industry stalls for 4 years. - 1921: BB&S releases Cooper Black with a lot of hype to hungry publishing, manufacturing and advertising industries. - 1924: Robert Middleton releases Ludlow Black. - 1924: The Stevens Shanks foundry, the British successor to the Figgins legacy, releases its own exact copies of Robur Noir and Robur Noir Allongée, alongside a lined version called Royal Lining. - 1925: Oswald Cooper releases his Cooper Black Condensed, with similar math to Robur Noir Allongée (20% reduction in width and vectical stroke). - 1925: Monotype releases Frederick Goudy's Goudy Heavy, an "answer to Cooper Black". Type historians gravely note it as the "teacher steals from his student" scandal. Goudy Heavy Condensed follows a few years later. - 1928: Linotype releases Chauncey Griffith's Pabst Extra Bold. The condensed counterpart is released in 1931. When type production technologies changed and it was time to retool the old faces for the Typositor age, Cooper Black was a frontrunning candidate, while Robur Noir was all but erased from history. This was mostly due to its commercial revival by flourishing and media-driven music and advertising industries. By the late 1960s variations and spinoffs of Cooper Black were in every typesetting catalog. In the early- to mid-1970s, VGC, wanting to capitalize on the Art Nouveau onslaught, published an uncredited exact copy of Robur Black under the name Skylark. But that also went with the dust of history and PR when digital tech came around, and Cooper Black was once again a prime retooling candidate. The "old fellows stole all of our best ideas" indeed. So almost a hundred years after its initial fizz, Robur is here in digital form, to reclaim its rightful position as the inspiration for, and the best alternative to, Cooper Black. Given that its forms date back to the turn of the century, a time when foundry output had a closer relationship to calligraphic and humanist craft, its shapes are truer to brush strokes and much more idiosyncratic than Cooper Black in their totality's construct. Robur and Robur Italic come in all popular font formats. Language support includes Western, Central and Eastern European character sets, as well as Baltic, Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish, and Celtic/Welsh languages. A range of complementary f-ligatures and a few alternates letters are included within the fonts.

With its extended complement, this comprehensive redesign of Bank Gothic by Elsner+Flake offers a wide spectrum for usage. After 80 years, the typeface Bank Gothic, designed by Morris Fuller Benton in 1930, is still as desirable for all areas of graphic design as it has ever been. Its usage spans the design of headlines to exterior design. Game manufacturers adopt this spry typeface, so reminiscent of the Bauhaus and its geometric forms, as often as do architects and web designers. The creative path of the Bank Gothic from hot metal type via phototypesetting to digital variations created by desktop designers has by now taken on great breadth. The number of cuts has increased. The original Roman weight has been augmented by Oblique and Italic variants. The original versions came with just a complement of Small Caps. Now, they are, however, enlarged by often quite individualized lower case letters. In order to do justice to the form changes and in order to differentiate between the various versions, the Bank Gothic, since 2007 a US trademark of the Grosse Pointe Group (Trademark FontHaus, USA), is nowadays available under a variety of different names. Some of these variations remain close to the original concept, others strive for greater individualism in their designs. The typeface family which was cut by the American typefoundry ATF (American Type Founders) in the early 1930’s consisted of a normal and a narrow type family, each one in the weights Light, Medium and Bold. In addition to its basic ornamental structure which has its origin in square or rectangular geometric forms, there is another unique feature of the Bank Gothic: the normally round upper case letters such as B, C, G, O, P, Q, R and U are also rectangular. The one exception is the upper case letter D, which remains round, most likely for legibility reasons (there is the danger of mistaking it for the letter O.) Because of the huge success of this type design, which follows the design principles of the more square and the more contemporary adaption of the already existing Copperplate, it was soon adopted by all of the major type and typesetting manufacturers. Thus, the Bank Gothic appeared at Linotype; as Commerce Gothic it was brought out by Ludlow; and as Deluxe Gothic on Intertype typesetters. Among others, it was also available from Monotype and sold under the name Stationer’s Gothic. In 1936, Linotype introduced 6pt and 12pt weights of the condensed version as Card Gothic. Lateron, Linotype came out with Bank Gothic Medium Condensed in larger sizes and a more narrow set width and named it Poster Gothic. With the advent of photoypesetters and CRT technologies, the Bank Gothic experienced an even wider acceptance. The first digital versions, designed according to present computing technologies, was created by Bitstream whose PostScript fonts in Regular and Medium weights have been available through FontShop since 1991. These were followed by digital redesigns by FontHaus, USA, and, in 1996, by Elsner+Flake who were also the first company to add cursive cuts. In 2009, they extended the family to 16 weights in both Roman and Oblique designs. In addition, they created the long-awaited Cyrillic complement. In 2010, Elsner+Flake completed the set with lowercase letters and small caps. Since its redesign the type family has been available from Elsner+Flake under the name Bank Sans®. The character set of the Bank Sans® Caps and the Bank Sans® covers almost all latin-based languages (Europe Plus) as well as the Cyrillic character set MAC OS Cyrillic and MS Windows 1251. Both families are available in Normal, Condensed and Compressed weights in 4 stroke widths each (Light, Regular, Medium and Bold). The basic stroke widths of the different weights have been kept even which allows the mixing of, for instance, normal upper case letters and the more narrow small caps. This gives the family an even wider and more interactive range of use. There are, furthermore, extensive sets of numerals which can be accessed via OpenType-Features. The Bank Sans® type family, as opposed to the Bank Sans® Caps family, contains, instead of the optically reduced upper case letters, newly designed lower case letters and the matching small caps. Bank Sans® fonts are available in the formats OpenType and TrueType.

Fioritura is a floral display typeface inspired by Sandro Botticelli's "Primavera" ("Spring") and Guiseppe Arcimboldo's "The Four Seasons" paintings. Fioritura means flowering in Italian, and the character composition consists of stems, leaves, flowers, and flying pollen. Scripts: Latin, Greek, Cyrillic. Language count: 480+. Glyph count: 1103. Kerning: 936 class pairs. Hinting: Not applied. Contextual Alternates: AA BB CC DD EE FF GG LL MM NN OO PP RR SS TT ZZ aa bb cc dd ee ff gg ll mm nn oo pp rr ss tt zz. To keep the writing natural, every second of two frequently repeated letters is automatically replaced by its alternative version. Turned on by default. Contextual Alternates: ΆΈΉΊΌΎΏ. Greek uppercase accented characters lose their tonos accent and retain only dieresis in All Caps mode. Turned on by default. If you need tonos accents in All Caps then turn off Contextual Alternates (calt) feature. Stylistic Alternates: ABCDEFGLMNOPRSTZ abcdefglmnoprstz. Supported languages: Abenaki, Abron, Acheron, Achinese, Achuar-Shiwiar, Adamawa Fulfulde, Adangme, Afar, Afrikaans (Latin), Aghem, Aguaruna, Aja, Akan, Albanian, Alsatian, Amahuaca, Amarakaeri, Amis, Andaandi (Dongolawi), Anuta, Ao Naga, Apinayé, Arabela, Aragonese, Aranese, Aromanian, Arrernte, Arvanitic (Latin), Asháninka, Asturian, Asu, Atayal, Awa-Cuaiquer, Awetí, Aymara, Azerbaijani (Latin, Cyrillic), Baatonum, Bafia, Bagirmi Fulfulde, Balinese, Balkan Romani, Bambara (Latin), Baoulé, Bari, Basaa, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Batak (Latin), Belarusian (Latin, Cyrillic), Bemba, Bena, Biali, Bikol, Bini, Bislama, Boko, Bora, Borgu Fulfulde, Bouna Kulango, Bosnian, Breton, Buginese (Latin), Bulgarian, Buryat, Bushi, Candoshi-Shapra, Cape Verdean Creole, Caquinte, Caribbean Hindustani, Cashibo-Cacataibo, Cashinahua, Catalan, Cebuano, Chachi, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chayahuita, Chechen, Chewa (Latin), Chickasaw, Chiga, Chiltepec Chinantec, Chokwe, Chuukese, Cimbrian, Cofán, Colognian, Cornish, Corsican, Creek (Muscogee), Croatian, Czech, Dagaare, Dagbani, Danish, Dawan, Dehu, Delaware, Dendi, Dholuo, Dimli, Dinka, Ditammari, Drehu, Duala, Dutch, Dungan, Dyula, Embu, English, Erzya, Ese Ejja, Esperanto, Estonian, Ewe, Ewondo, Falam Chin, Fanti, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, Folkspraak, Fon, French, Friulian, Frisian, Fula, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ga’anda, Garifuna, Gen, Genoese, German, Gikuyu, Gilbertese, Gonja, Gooniyandi, Greek, Greenlandic (Kalaallisut), Guadeloupean Creole, Guarani, Gusii (Latin), Gwich’in, Haitian, Hakha Chin (Latin), Hän, Hani, Hausa (Latin), Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Ho-Chunk, Hopi, Hotcąk (Latin), Huastec, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ido, Igbo (Latin), Ilocano, Indonesian, Interglossa, Interlingua, Irish, Istro-Romanian, Italian, Ixcatlán Mazatec, Jamaican, Javanese (Latin), Jèrriais, Jola, Kabuverdianu, Kabiyè, Kabuverdianu, Kabyle (Latin), Kaingang, Kako, Kala Lagaw Ya, Kalaallisut, Kalenjin, Kalmyk (Cyrillic), Kamba, Kanuri, Kaonde, Kapampangan (Latin), Kaqchikel, Karachay (Cyrillic), Karakalpak (Latin), Karelian, Kashubian, Kazakh, Kekchí, Kenzi, Khalkha (Cyrillic), Khasi, Khoekhoe, K’iche’, Kikuyu, Kimbundu, Kinyarwanda (Ruanda), Kiribati, Kirmanjki, Kirundi (Rundi), Kissi, Kituba, Klingon, Kölsch, Kongo, Konzo, Koyra Chiini, Koyraboro Senni, Kpelle, Krio, Kuanyama, Kumyk, Kurdish, Kven Finnish, Kwasio, Kyrgyz (Cyrillic), Ladin, Ladino, Lakota, Lamnso’, Langi, Latgalian, Latin, Latino sine Flexione, Latvian, Ligurian, Limba, Lingala, Lithuanian, Lobi, Lojban, Lombard, Low German, Lozi, Luba-Katanga, Luba-Lulua, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Maasai, Maasina Fulfulde, Macedonian, Machame, Madurese (Latin), Makhuwa, Makonde, Makwe, Malagasy (Latin), Malaysian Malay (Latin), Maltese, Mam, Maninkakan, Manx, Maore Comorian, Māori, Mapudungun, Marquesan, Marshallese, Masai, Matsés, Mauritian Creole, Mbelime, Megleno-Romanian, Mende, Meriam Mir, Meru, Meta’ (Latin), Metlatónoc Mixtec, Mezquital Otomi, Mi’kmaq, Minangkabau, Mirandese, Mískito, Miyobe, Mizo, Mohawk, Moksha, Moldovan, Mongolian (Cyrillic), Montagnais, Montenegrin (Latin, Cyrillic), Mossi, Mundang, Munsee, Murrinh-Patha, Murui Huitoto, Mwani, Naga Pidgin, Nagamese Creole, Nahuatl, Nama, Nateni, Navajo, Ndebele, Ndonga, Neapolitan, Ngazidja Comorian, Ngiemboon, Ngiyambaa, Ngomba, Nigerian Fulfulde, Niuean, Nobiin, Nomatsiguenga, Noongar, Norwegian (Bokmål, Nynorsk), Novial, Nuer, Nyamwezi, Nyanja, Nyankole, Nyemba, Nzima, Occidental (Interlingue), Occitan, Ojitlán Chinantec, Old Icelandic, Old Norse, Onĕipŏt, Oromo, Oroqen, Oshiwambo (Ovambo), Ossetian (Latin, Cyrillic), Otuho, Páez, Palauan, Paluan, Pampanga, Papantla Totonac, Papiamentu, Pedi, Picard, Pichis Ashéninka, Piedmontese, Pijin, Pintupi-Luritja, Pipil, Pohnpeian, Polish, Portuguese, Potawatomi, Prussian, Pulaar, Pular, Purepecha, Qiandong Miao, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romani, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rotokas, Russian, Rusyn, Rwa, Sakha, Samburu, Sami (Inari, Lule, Northern, Southern, Pite, Skolt, Ume), Samoan, Sango, Sangu, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Secoya, Sena, Serbian, Seri, Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Sharanahua, Shawnee, Shilluk, Shipibo-Conibo, Shona, Shuar, Sicilian, Silesian, Siona, Slovak, Slovene (Slovenian), Slovio (Latin), Soga, Somali, Soninke, Sorbian (Lower, Upper), Sotho (Nothern, Southern), Spanish, Sranan, Sukuma, Sundanese (Latin), Susu, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Swiss German, Tachelhit (Latin), Tagalog, Tahitian, Taita, Tajik (Cyrillic), Talysh, Tasawaq, Tatar (Cyrillic, Latin), Tedim Chin, Teso, Tetum, Ticuna, Timne, Tiv, Toba, Tojolabal, Tok Pisin, Tokelauan, Tonga, Tongan, Tosk, Totontepec Mixe, Tsafiki, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin, Cyrillic), Tuvaluan, Tuvan, Twi, Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Uab Meto, Ukrainian, Ulithian, Umbundu, Urarina, Uyghur (Cyrillic), Uzbek (Latin, Cyrillic), Vai, Venda, Venetian, Veps, Vietnamese, Volapük, Võro, Vunjo, Waama, Waci Gbe, Wallisian, Walloon, Walser, Wangaaybuwan-Ngiyambaa, Waorani, Waray, Warlpiri, Wasa, Wayuu, Welsh, Wik-Mungkan, Wiradjuri, Wolof (Latin), Xavante, Xhosa, Xwela Gbe, Yagua, Yanesha’, Yangben, Yanomamö, Yao, Yapese, Yindjibarndi, Yoruba (Latin), Yucateco, Záparo, Zapotec, Zarma, Zazaki, Zulu, Zuni. The promo images used photos of Cottonbro, Maria Lindsey from Pexels, and Andreea Popa, Wyron A from Unsplash.

Type designers are crazy people. Not crazy in the sense that they think we are Napoleon, but in the sense that the sky can be falling, wars tearing the world apart, disasters splitting the very ground we walk on, plagues circling continents to pick victims randomly, yet we will still perform our ever optimistic task of making some little spot of the world more appealing to the human eye. We ought to be proud of ourselves, I believe. Optimism is hard to come by these days. Regardless of our own personal reasons for doing what we do, the very thing we do is in itself an act of optimism and belief in the inherent beauty that exists within humanity. As recently as ten years ago, I wouldn't have been able to choose the amazing obscure profession I now have, wouldn't have been able to be humbled by the history that falls into my hands and slides in front of my eyes every day, wouldn't have been able to live and work across previously impenetrable cultural lines as I do now, and wouldn't have been able to raise my glass of Malbeck wine to toast every type designer who was before me, is with me, and will be after me. As recently as ten years ago, I wouldn't have been able to mean these words as I wrote them: It’s a small world. Yes, it is a small world, and a wonderfully complex one too. With so much information drowning our senses by the minute, it has become difficult to find clear meaning in almost anything. Something throughout the day is bound to make us feel even smaller in this small world. Most of us find comfort in a routine. Some of us find extended families. But in the end we are all Eleanor Rigbys, lonely on the inside and waiting for a miracle to come. If a miracle can make the world small, another one can perhaps give us meaning. And sometimes a miracle happens for a split second, then gets buried until a crazy type designer finds it. I was on my honeymoon in New York City when I first stumbled upon the letters that eventually started this Affair. A simple, content tourist walking down the streets formerly unknown to me except through pop music and film references. Browsing the shops of the city that made Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, and a thousand other artists. Trying to chase away the tourist mentality, wondering what it would be like to actually live in the city of a billion tiny lights. Tourists don't go to libraries in foreign cities. So I walked into one. Two hours later I wasn't in New York anymore. I wasn't anywhere substantial. I was the crazy type designer at the apex of insanity. La La Land, alphabet heaven, curves and twirls and loops and swashes, ribbons and bows and naked letters. I'm probably not the very first person on this planet to be seduced into starting an Affair while on his honeymoon, but it is something to tease my better half about once in a while. To this day I can't decide if I actually found the worn book, or if the book itself called for me. Its spine was nothing special, sitting on a shelf, tightly flanked by similar spines on either side. Yet it was the only one I picked off that shelf. And I looked at only one page in it before walking to the photocopier and cheating it with an Argentine coin, since I didn't have the American quarter it wanted. That was the beginning. I am now writing this after the Affair is over. And it was an Affair to remember, to pull a phrase. Right now, long after I have drawn and digitized and tested this alphabet, and long after I saw what some of this generation’s type designers saw in it, I have the luxury to speculate on what Affair really is, what made me begin and finish it, what cultural expressions it has, and so on. But in all honesty it wasn't like that. Much like in my Ministry Script experience, I was a driven man, a lover walking the ledge, an infatuated student following the instructions of his teacher while seeing her as a perfect angel. I am not exaggerating when I say that the letters themselves told me how to extend them. I was exploited by an alphabet, and it felt great. Unlike my experience with Ministry Script, where the objective was to push the technology to its limits, this Affair felt like the most natural and casual sequence of processions in the world – my hand following the grid, the grid following what my hand had already done – a circle of creation contained in one square computer cell, then doing it all over again. By contrast, it was the lousiest feeling in the world when I finally reached the conclusion that the Affair was done. What would I do now? Would any commitment I make from now on constitute a betrayal of these past precious months? I'm largely over all that now, of course. I like to think I'm a better man now because of the experience. Affair is an enormous, intricately calligraphic OpenType font based on a 9x9 photocopy of a page from a 1950s lettering book. In any calligraphic font, the global parameters for developing the characters are usually quite volatile and hard to pin down, but in this case it was particularly difficult because the photocopy was too gray and the letters were of different sizes, very intertwined and scan-impossible. So finishing the first few characters in order to establish the global rhythm was quite a long process, after which the work became a unique soothing, numbing routine by which I will always remember this Affair. The result of all the work, at least to the eyes of this crazy designer, is 1950s American lettering with a very Argentine wrapper. My Affair is infused with the spirit of filete, dulce de leche, yerba mate, and Carlos Gardel. Upon finishing the font I was fortunate enough that a few of my colleagues, great type designers and probably much saner than I am, agreed to show me how they envision my Affair in action. The beauty they showed me makes me feel small and yearn for the world to be even smaller now – at least small enough so that my international colleagues and I can meet and exchange stories over a good parrilla. These people, whose kindness is very deserving of my gratitude, and whose beautiful art is very deserving of your appreciation, are in no particular order: Corey Holms, Mariano Lopez Hiriart, Xavier Dupré, Alejandro Ros, Rebecca Alaccari, Laura Meseguer, Neil Summerour, Eduardo Manso, and the Doma group. You can see how they envisioned using Affair in the section of this booklet entitled A Foreign Affair. The rest of this booklet contains all the obligatory technical details that should come with a font this massive. I hope this Affair can bring you as much peace and satisfaction as it brought me, and I hope it can help your imagination soar like mine did when I was doing my duty for beauty.