Francesco Canovaro designed Asgard as a way to mix his passion for the raw energy of extra bold sans serif typography with the expressivity of high contrast and calligraphy-inspired letterforms. He built the typeface around a strong geometric sans skeleton, to make the letters feel solid and powerful while using wood-type vernacular solutions to solve density through high contrast details. The typeface name was chosen as an homage to the mythical homeland of the Norse Gods, evoking a land of fierce warriors, power and strength - but also of divine, delicate beauty. Thanks to the help of Andrea Tartarelli and Mario de Libero the original design was extended along with the design space, expanding the number of weights and widths with a "workhorse typeface" approach, and adding also a slanted axis to experiment with italics. The result is a super-family of 9 styles of 8 weights for a total of 72 fonts, each coming with an extended set of 968 glyphs covering over 200 languages using Latin, Greek and Cyrillic scripts. The three variation axes (width, weight, slant) are also all accessible in a variable font version that is included with the whole family. This gives the designer a full range of options for typesetting, with the Roman and Fit widths providing basic display and text-sized alternatives, and the Wide width adding more display and titling options. The inclusion of backslant italic styles gives Asgard an extra chance to add its voice to the typographic palette. To complement this, all Asgard fonts have been given a full set of Open Type Features including standard and discretionary ligatures, stylistic sets, positional numerals and case sensitive forms. Dynamic and expressive, Asgard is a super-family that manages to look brutal and refined at the same time, quoting the vernacular typographic practices of letterpress print while expressing the contemporary zeitgeist. • Suggested uses: perfect for contemporary branding and logo design, bold editorial design, dynamic packaging and countless other projects. • 73 styles: 8 weights + 8 italics + 8 backslant italics, 3 different widths + 1 variable font. • 968 glyphs in each weight. • Useful OpenType features: Access All Alternates, Contextual Alternates, Case-Sensitive Forms, Glyph Composition / Decomposition, Discretionary Ligatures, Denominators, Fractions, Kerning, Standard Ligatures, Lining Figures, Localized Forms, Mark Positioning, Mark to Mark Positioning, Alternate Annotation Forms, Numerators, Oldstyle Figures, Ordinals, Scientific Inferiors, Stylistic Set 1, Stylistic Set 2, Stylistic Set 3, Subscript, Superscript, Slashed Zero • 219 languages supported (extended Latin, Greek and Cyrillic alphabets): English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Russian, German, Javanese (Latin), Vietnamese, Turkish, Italian, Polish, Afaan Oromo, Azeri, Tagalog, Sundanese (Latin), Filipino, Moldovan, Romanian, Indonesian, Dutch, Cebuano, Igbo, Malay, Uzbek (Latin), Kurdish (Latin), Swahili, Greek, Hungarian, Czech, Haitian Creole, Hiligaynon, Afrikaans, Somali, Zulu, Serbian, Swedish, Bulgarian, Shona, Quechua, Albanian, Catalan, Chichewa, Ilocano, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Neapolitan, Xhosa, Tshiluba, Slovak, Danish, Gikuyu, Finnish, Norwegian, Sicilian, Sotho (Southern), Kirundi, Tswana, Sotho (Northern), Belarusian (Latin), Turkmen (Latin), Bemba, Lombard, Lithuanian, Tsonga, Wolof, Jamaican, Dholuo, Galician, Ganda, Low Saxon, Waray-Waray, Makhuwa, Bikol, Kapampangan (Latin), Aymara, Zarma, Ndebele, Slovenian, Tumbuka, Venetian, Genoese, Piedmontese, Swazi, Zazaki, Latvian, Nahuatl, Silesian, Bashkir (Latin), Sardinian, Estonian, Afar, Cape Verdean Creole, Maasai, Occitan, Tetum, Oshiwambo, Basque, Welsh, Chavacano, Dawan, Montenegrin, Walloon, Asturian, Kaqchikel, Ossetian (Latin), Zapotec, Frisian, Guadeloupean Creole, Q’eqchi’, Karakalpak (Latin), Crimean Tatar (Latin), Sango, Luxembourgish, Samoan, Maltese, Tzotzil, Fijian, Friulian, Icelandic, Sranan, Wayuu, Papiamento, Aromanian, Corsican, Breton, Amis, Gagauz (Latin), Māori, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Alsatian, Atayal, Kiribati, Seychellois Creole, Võro, Tahitian, Scottish Gaelic, Chamorro, Greenlandic (Kalaallisut), Kashubian, Faroese, Rarotongan, Sorbian (Upper Sorbian), Karelian (Latin), Romansh, Chickasaw, Arvanitic (Latin), Nagamese Creole, Saramaccan, Ladin, Kaingang, Palauan, Sami (Northern Sami), Sorbian (Lower Sorbian), Drehu, Wallisian, Aragonese, Mirandese, Tuvaluan, Xavante, Zuni, Montagnais, Hawaiian, Marquesan, Niuean, Yapese, Vepsian, Bislama, Hopi, Megleno-Romanian, Creek, Aranese, Rotokas, Tokelauan, Mohawk, Onĕipŏt, Warlpiri, Cimbrian, Sami (Lule Sami), Jèrriais, Arrernte, Murrinh-Patha, Kala Lagaw Ya, Cofán, Gwich’in, Seri, Sami (Southern Sami), Istro-Romanian, Wik-Mungkan, Anuta, Cornish, Sami (Inari Sami), Yindjibarndi, Noongar, Hotcąk (Latin), Meriam Mir, Manx, Shawnee, Gooniyandi, Ido, Wiradjuri, Hän, Ngiyambaa, Delaware, Potawatomi, Abenaki, Esperanto, Folkspraak, Interglossa, Interlingua, Latin, Latino sine Flexione, Lojban, Novial, Occidental, Old Icelandic, Old Norse, Slovio (Latin), Volapük.

Hey! See Reina Neue in action here! INTRODUCTION When I designed the first Reina¹ circa 2010, I was at the dawn of my career as a type designer. The S{o}TA, short for the Society of Typographic Aficionados, described it as complex display typeface incorporating hairline flourishes to a nicely heavy romantic letterform². And it was like that; that’s what I was pursuing at that time since I was very passionate about ornaments and accolades of Calligraphy. Why? I felt that Typography, in general, needed more of them. These subtle flourishes could breathe life into letters. Maybe, I thought it was the only way I could propose something new into the field of type. However, after some years, I came across a very interesting quote: –Beautiful things don’t ask for attention– Wow! What did this mean? How could something be attractive if it’s not actually showing it. Could this be applied to my work? Sure. I think every type-designer goes through this process (aka crisis) regarding his or her career. At the beginning we love everything. We are kind of blind, we only see the big picture of a project. And that’s not because we are lazy. We actually can’t see the small mistakes nor the subtleties that make something simpler beautiful. We are not able. But, the small subtleties… They are actually everything: With experience, one puts more attention into the details and learns that every single decision in type has to be first meticulously planned. Here I am now, introducing a new Reina, because I felt there was a lot of it that could be improved, also the novelty of Variable Fonts caught my attention and I had to take that to my type library. THE FONT A thing of beauty is a joy forever Now, a decade later, I’m presenting Reina Neue. This font is not just an update of its predecessor: –A thing of beauty is a joy forever– is the first line of the poem ‘Endymion’ by John Keats, and despite the meaning of “beauty” may vary from person to person, and even from time to time (as read in the last paragraph), with Reina I always wanted to bring joy to the eye. In 2010, and now, in 2020. I believe the font is today much better in every aspect. It was entirely re-designed: Its shapes and morphology in general are much more clean and pure. The range of uses for it is now wider: While the old Reina consisted in just one weight, Reina Neue was converted into a big family of many weights, even with italics, smallcaps and layered styles. The idea behind the font, this kind of enveloping atmosphere made out of flourishes, is still here in the new Reina. This time easier to get amazing results due to the big amount of available alternates per glyph and also more loyal from a systemic point of view. However, and as read in the introduction -Beautiful things don’t ask for attention-, if none of the flourishes are activated the font will look very attractive anyway. Reina Neue is ready to be used in book covers, magazines, wedding cards, dazzling posters, storefronts, clothing, perfumes, wine labels and logos of all kind. Like it happened with the previous Reina, I hope this new font satisfies every design project around the world if used, and can be a joy forever. SOME INSTRUCTIONS Before choosing the right style for your project, hear my advice: -Reina Neue Display was meant to be used at big sizes. If you plan to print the font smaller than 72pt, I suggest using Reina Neue, not Display. Otherwise, if the font will be BIG or used on a digital platform, Reina Neue Display should be your choice. For even smaller sizes, use Reina Neue Small. This style was tested and printed in 12pt with nice results. (Note for variable fonts: Print them in outlines) -Reina Italic is not a slanted version of the roman, and this means some flourishes are different between each other. The Italic version has other kind of swirls. More conservative, in general. -All the styles of Reina Capitals have Small Capitals inside. -Reina Capitals Shine should be used/paired ONLY with Reina Capitals Black. The engraved feeling can be achieved if Reina Capitals Black and Reina Capitals Shine are used as layers, with the same word. Variable fonts instructions: -For more playful versions, choose Reina Neue VF, Reina Neue Italic VF or Reina Neue Capitals VF: With them you can adjust between 3 axes: Weight (will change the weight of the font) – Optic Size (will thicken/lighten the thin strokes and open/close the tracking) – Accolades (will modify the weight of the active flourishes). SOME VIDEOS OF REINA NEUE VF https://youtu.be/8cImmT5bpQM https://youtu.be/1icWfPmKAkg https://youtu.be/YC9GkJDL1a8 NOTES 1. The original Reina, from a decade ago: https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/argentina-lian-types/reina/ 2. In 2011, Reina received an honourable mention by S{o}TA. “Great skill is shown in the detailing, and an excellent feel for the correct flow of curves and displacement of stroke weight.” https://www.typesociety.org/catalyst/2011/ Reina was featured in the “Most Popular Fonts of the year” in MyFonts in 2011 https://www.myfonts.com/newsletters/sp/201201.html In 2012, the font was also selected in Tipos Latinos, the most prestigious competition of type in Latinoamerica. https://www.tiposlatinos.com/bienales/quinta-bienal-tl2012/resultados Also, chose as a “Favorite font of the year” in Typographica. https://typographica.org/typeface-reviews/reina/

Danah” is the first name of a very close and cherished classmate, friend, and peer. Danah is a Palestinian woman who used to study with me in the same university where I was honorably introduced to her several years ago. In fact, I decided to dedicate this typeface wholly to her in return for all the years of friendship that we had spent together as classmates during the late 1990s. She was—and absolutely still—a source of support and inspiration for me in life due to her brilliant, big-hearted, and philanthropic personality. Danah likes different things in life and among them the sea, horses, reading, and also travelling. She lives and works now in Palestine, and yearns for being granted a new life—like many other free Palestinians—full of freedom, peace, and happyness. Danah® is a handwriting and scribbly Arabic display typeface. The main trait of this typeface is the realistic handwriting design of its letters and ligatures. This feature renders it as one of the stylish typefaces used for headlines and also texts. Among the distinguished letters of Danah® typeface are the “Qaaf”, “Kaaf”, “Meem”, “Noon”, and others. Moreover, Danah® typeface has a character set which supports Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Latin letters/numerals with a limited range of specific Arabic and Latin ligatures. This font comes in a single weight (i.e., regular) with exactly 639 distinctive glyphs. Due to its free and streamlined design, Danah® typeface is appropriate for heading and text in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. It can be graphically and visually exploited in magazines, posters, and interfaces of different things such as clothes and equipment. Moreover, it can be pleasingly used in writing personal, friendly, and unofficial letters, messages, documents, invoices, notes, dispatches and menus which require a smoothed handwritten touch and trend. It is also elegantly suitable for signs, books’ covers, advertisement light boards, and titles of flyers, pamphlets, novels, and books of children and adults. In brief, Danah® typeface is one of the new hand-drawn typefaces which can be brought into play efficiently in diverse graphic, typographic, calligraphic, and artistic works in different languages and cultures. 2018-09-13 00:00:00.000 10.0000 F25946-S114426 10913 Timeless URW Type Foundry https://www.myfonts.com/collections/timeless-duplicate-font-urw NULL NULL 2016-01-08 00:00:00.000 89.9900 F10913-S42560 54569 Jellofries Maulana Creative https://www.myfonts.com/collections/jellofries-font-maulana-creative https://cdn.myfonts.net/cdn-cgi/image/width=417,height=208,fit=contain,format=auto/images/pim/10000/JtHgrbkPi7YU282OWix69Tqb_97b690350e4b3ed453d7c27fe0eb6664.png Jellofries is a fancy brush script font. With brush bold contrast stroke, fun character with a bit of ligatures and alternates. To give you an extra creative work. Jellofries font support multilingual more than 100+ language. This font is good for logo design, Social media, Movie Titles, Books Titles, a short text even a long text letter and good for your secondary text font with sans or serif. Make a stunning work with Jellofries font. Cheers, Maulana Creative 2022-05-06 00:00:00.000 12.0000 F54569-S252887 38361 Alt Moav ALT https://www.myfonts.com/collections/alt-moav-font-andreas-leonidou https://cdn.myfonts.net/cdn-cgi/image/width=417,height=208,fit=contain,format=auto/images/pim/10000/70046_aa489c02cd589f8f924b405c901a8014.png Moav is a geometric experimental display typeface for use on logos,posters etc. 2011-12-13 00:00:00.000 15.0000 F38361-S179452 42255 M Elle HK Monotype HK https://www.myfonts.com/collections/m-elle-hk-font-monotype-hk NULL HK series fonts are in Unicode encoding and consists of BIG 5 character set and HKSCS characters. The character glyphs are based on the regular Traditional Chinese writing form and style. It is generally used in Taiwan ROC, Hong Kong and Macau. 2011-05-11 00:00:00.000 523.9900 F42255-S193845 71839 Kaerobi Kulokale https://www.myfonts.com/collections/kaerobi-font-kulokale https://cdn.myfonts.net/cdn-cgi/image/width=417,height=208,fit=contain,format=auto/images/pim/10004/ieVtB18gl4EgKrVVDIPLtX8b_33d93ffd2cd339b2544feb3d7a0a3121.png Kaerobi is an condensed display font, and with a style that is very different from the others. This font comes in four styles, Regular, Oblique, Rough, and Outline Version. Kaerobi is well-suited for posters, social media, headlines, magazine titles, clothing, large print formats - and wherever you want to be seen. Inspired by the style of design that is currently popular, and this is the answer to all the needs of every idea that you will pour in this modern era. We highly recommend using a program that supports OpenType features and Glyphs panels such as Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop CC, Adobe InDesign, or CorelDraw, so you can see and access all Glyph variations. This font is encoded with Unicode PUA, which allows full access to all additional characters without having special design software. Mac users can use Font Book, and Windows users can use Character Map to view and copy one of the extra characters to paste into your favorite text editor / application. Thank You. 2022-08-16 00:00:00.000 17.0000 F71839-S298671 52588 The Heather Romie Creative https://www.myfonts.com/collections/the-heather-font-romie-creative https://cdn.myfonts.net/cdn-cgi/image/width=417,height=208,fit=contain,format=auto/images/pim/10000/Lc4estBSB0wCiDunz9GNDUcb_097035319875b31f0a18a4bb2e8e675b.png The Heather Script is a formal calligraphy design, including Regular. This font is casual and pretty with a stroke. Can be used for various purposes. such as logos, product packaging, wedding invitations, branding, headlines, signage, labels, signatures, book covers, posters, quotes and much more. Heather Script featuring OpenType style alternatives, ligatures and International support for most Western Languages ​​is included. 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 a later version. How to access all alternative characters using Adobe Illustrator: *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzwjMkbB-wQ Heather Script is coded with PUA Unicode, which allows full access to all additional characters without having to design special software. Mac users can use Font Book , and Windows users can use Character Map to view and copy any additional characters to paste into your favorite text editor/application. How to access all alternative characters, using the Windows Character Map with Photoshop: *https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go9vacoYmBw 2022-02-23 00:00:00.000 19.0000 F52588-S242949 16709 Pastina Lebbad Design https://www.myfonts.com/collections/pastina-font-lebbad-design https://cdn.myfonts.net/cdn-cgi/image/width=417,height=208,fit=contain,format=auto/images/pim/10000/220264_a574aa9e49d2f9f1da3950f1fef09123.png Pastina is an elegant serif font consisting of caps, lower case, and alternate characters. Soft serifs and the graceful flow of each character add to the classic feel of this font. 2008-07-31 00:00:00.000 24.9500 F16709-S66588 2367 Munira Script Picatype https://www.myfonts.com/collections/munira-script-font-picatype https://cdn.myfonts.net/cdn-cgi/image/width=417,height=208,fit=contain,format=auto/images/pim/10000/309621_5c93006e7517281c082dc7c75bfd1c2b.png Munira Script is a modern calligraphy design. This font is casual and pretty with swashes. It can be used for various purposes. such as logos, product packaging, wedding invitations, branding, headlines, signage, labels, signature, book covers, posters, quotes and more. Munira Script features OpenType stylistic alternates, ligatures and International support for most Western Languages. To enable the OpenType Stylistic alternates, you need a program that supports OpenType features such as Adobe Illustrator CS, Adobe Indesign & CorelDraw X6-X7, Microsoft Word 2010 or later versions. How to access all alternative characters using Adobe Illustrator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzwjMkbB-wQ How to access all alternative characters, using Windows Character Map with Photoshop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go9vacoYmBw Munira Script is coded with PUA Unicode, which allows full access to all the extra characters without having special designing software. Mac users can use Font Book , and Windows users can use Character Map to view and copy any of the extra characters to paste into your favourite text editor/app. If you need help or have any questions, please let me know. I'm happy to help :) Thanks & Happy Designing! 2019-07-05 00:00:00.000 10.0000 F2367-S10062 27004 Ketimun Hanoded https://www.myfonts.com/collections/ketimun-font-hanoded https://cdn.myfonts.net/cdn-cgi/image/width=417,height=208,fit=contain,format=auto/images/pim/10000/306179_8517cd9a57ccc15cff68737e17de4e85.png Ketimun means ‘cucumber’ in Bahasa Indonesia. At home we eat a lot (A LOT) of Indonesian food, which often includes Acar Ketimun (Sweet/sour cucumber salad). I usually make the simple version, but sometimes I go for the more elaborate cucumber salad (the recipe of which you’ll find on poster 2). Ketimun font is a rather delicious script font; uneven, organic and full of life. Comes with a fresh taste and lots of diacritics. 2019-06-06 00:00:00.000 15.0000 F27004-S120951 38675 Psalterium Alter Littera https://www.myfonts.com/collections/psalterium-font-alter-littera https://cdn.myfonts.net/cdn-cgi/image/width=417,height=208,fit=contain,format=auto/images/pim/10000/204202_94b78204200645ccd1daa5d5f1a63916.png A clean, smooth adaptation of the magnificent gothic types used by Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer in their famous Mainz Psalter (Psalterium Moguntinum) of 1457, also used in their Canon of the Mass (Canon Missae) of 1458, and in their Benedictine Psalter (Psalterium Benedictinum) of 1459. [Although these works were published after Gutenberg’s break with Fust, it is generally agreed that Gutenberg was working along with Fust and Schöffer on the Mainz Psalter while the 42-line Bible was still being printed.] In addition to the usual standard characters for typesetting modern texts, the font includes a comprehensive set of special characters, uncial initials (adapted from both the Mainz Psalter and early sixteenth-century Dutch types by Henric Pieterszoon), alternates and ligatures, plus Opentype features, that can be used for typesetting (almost) exactly as in the Mainz Psalter and later incunabula. The main historical sources used during the font design process were high-resolution scans from the copy of the Mainz Psalter preserved at the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna (the only copy whose colophon includes the famous printer’s mark of Fust and Schöffer). Other sources were as follows: Masson, I. (1954), The Mainz Psalters and Canon Missae, 1457-59, London: Printed for the Bibliographical Society; Kapr, A. (1996), Johann Gutenberg - The Man and his Invention, Aldershot: Scolar Press (ch. 8); Füssel, S. (2005), Gutenberg and the impact of printing, Burlington: Ashgate (ch. 1); and Man, J. (2009), The Gutenberg Revolution, London: Bantam (ch. 8). Specimen, detailed character map, OpenType features, and font samples available at Alter Littera’s The Oldtype “Psalterium” Font Page. Note: Several uncial initials in The Oldtype “Psalterium” Font have been derived from corresponding characters in The Initials “Gothic C” Font, adjusting them to cope with the special (large) x-height and letter spacing of the Psalterium font (so the two sets of initials are not directly interchangeable). 2012-07-06 00:00:00.000 25.0000 F38675-S178340 23791 VLNL Donuts VetteLetters https://www.myfonts.com/collections/vlnl-donuts-font-vetteletters https://cdn.myfonts.net/cdn-cgi/image/width=417,height=208,fit=contain,format=auto/images/pim/10001/190114_ca5047d6d6754375933067862f9328a8.png VLNL Donuts’ first incarnation was designed already in 2005 by DBXL as a logo for Dutch funky house music outfit Hardsoul, and since then has been used for lots of music related projects. Donuts is heavily infused by hip 1970s geometric fonts like Blippo, Pump and ITC Bauhaus, but nonetheless has both feet in this modern day and age. Meticulously designed and tightly spaced, VLNL Donuts is very suitable for logos, headlines and music artwork. We especially recommend using it on big 12 album covers. Oh, and it got its name for obvious reasons (“the O looks like one...’) VLNL Donuts is deep fried, glazed and can be covered in a variety of sweetness: sprinkles, cinnamon, coconut, chopped peanuts, powdered sugar or maple syrup. They also can be filled with cream, custard or jam. As a very sweet and saturated snack should, VLNL Donuts is fitted with a full set of alternate swoosh caps that can be deployed to liven up your already ‘out there’ designs.

A friend of mine says that sports are the ultimate popular drug. One of his favorite things to say is, “The sun’s always shining on a game somewhere.” It’s hard to argue with that. But that perspective is now the privilege of a society where technology is so high and mighty that it all but shapes such perspectives. These days I can, if I so choose, subscribe to nothing but sports on over a hundred TV channels and a thousand browser bookmarks. But it wasn't always like that. When I was growing up, long before the super-commercialization of the sport, I and other kids spent more than every spare minute of our time memorizing the names and positions of players, collecting team shirts and paraphernalia, making up game scenarios, and just being our generation’s entirely devoted fans. Argentina is one of the nations most obsessed with sports, especially "fútbol" (or soccer to North Americans). The running American joke was that we're all born with a football. When the national team is playing a game, stores actually close their doors, and Buenos Aires looks like a ghost town. Even on the local level, River Plate, my favorite team where I grew up, didn't normally have to worry about empty seats in its home stadium, even though attendance is charged at a high premium. There are things our senses absorb when we are children, yet we don't notice them until much later on in life. A sport’s collage of aesthetics is one of those things. When I was a kid I loved the teams and players that I loved, but I never really stopped to think what solidified them in my memory and made them instantly recognizable to me. Now, thirty-some years later, and after having had the fortune to experience many cultures other than my own, I can safely deduce that a sport’s aesthetic depends on the local or national culture as much as it depends on the sport itself. And the way all that gets molded in a single team’s identity becomes so intricate it is difficult to see where each part comes from to shape the whole. Although “futbol” is still in my blood as an Argentinean, I'm old enough to afford a little cynicism about how extremely corporate most popular sports are. Of course, nothing can now take away the joy I got from football in my childhood and early teens. But over the past few years I've been trying to perceive the sport itself in a global context, even alongside other popular sports in different areas of the world. Being a type designer, I naturally focus in my comparisons on the alphabets used in designing different sports experiences. And from that I've come to a few conclusions about my own taste in sports aesthetic, some of which surprised me. I think I like the baseball and basketball aesthetic better than football, hockey, volleyball, tennis, golf, cricket, rugby, and other sports. This of course is a biased opinion. I'm a lettering guy, and hand lettering is seen much more in baseball and basketball. But there’s a bit more to it than that. Even though all sports can be reduced to a bare-bones series of purposes and goals to reach, the rules and arrangements of baseball and basketball, in spite of their obvious tempo differences, are more suited for overall artistic motion than other sports. So when an application of swashed handlettering is used as part of a team’s identity in baseball or basketball, it becomes a natural fit. The swashes can almost be visual representation of a basketball curving in the air on its way to the hoop, or a baseball on its way out of the park. This expression is invariably backed by and connected to bold, sleak lettering, representing the driving force and precision (arms, bat) behind the artistic motion. It’s a simple and natural connective analysis to a designer, but the normal naked eye still marvels inexplicably at the beauty of such logos and wordmarks. That analytical simplicity was the divining rod behind Fan Script. My own ambitious brief was to build a readable yet very artistic sports script that can be a perfect fit for baseball or basketball identities, but which can also be implemented for other sports. The result turned out to be quite beautiful to my eyes, and I hope you find it satisfactory in your own work. Sports scripts like this one are rooted in showcard lettering models from the late 19th and early 20th century, like Detroit’s lettering teacher C. Strong’s — the same models that continue to influence book designers and sign painters for more than a century now. So as you can see, American turn-of-the-century calligraphy and its long-term influences still remain a subject of fascination to me. This fascination has been the engine of most of my work, and it shows clearly in Fan Script. Fan Script is a lively heavy brush face suitable for sports identities. It includes a variety of swashes of different shapes, both connective and non-connective, and contains a whole range of letter alternates. Users of this font will find a lot of casual freedom in playing with different combinations - a freedom backed by a solid technological undercurrent, where OpenType features provide immediate and logical solutions to problems common to this kind of script. One final thing bears mentioning: After the font design and production were completed, it was surprisingly delightful for me to notice, in the testing stage, that my background as a packaging designer seems to have left a mark on the way the font works overall. The modern improvements I applied to the letter forms have managed to induce a somewhat retro packaging appearance to the totality of the typeface. So I expect Fan Script will be just as useful in packaging as it would be in sports identity, logotype and merchandizing. Ale Paul

The famous roman type cut in Venice by Nicolas Jenson, and used in 1470 for his printing of the tract, De Evangelica Praeparatione, Eusebius, has usually been declared the seminal and definitive representative of a class of types known as Venetian Old Style. The Jenson type is thought to have been the primary model for types that immediately followed. Subsequent 15th-century Venetian Old Style types, cut by other punchcutters in Venice and elsewhere in Italy, are also worthy of study, but have been largely neglected by 20th-century type designers. There were many versions of Venetian Old Style types produced in the final quarter of the quattrocento. The exact number is unknown, but numerous printed examples survive, though the actual types, matrices, and punches are long gone. All these types are not, however, conspicuously Jensonian in character. Each shows a liberal amount of individuality, inconsistency, and eccentricity. My fascination with these historical types began in the 1970s and eventually led to the production of my first text typeface, Iowan Old Style (Bitstream, 1991). Sometime in the early 1990s, I started doodling letters for another Venetian typeface. The letters were pieced together from sections of circles and squares. The n, a standard lowercase control character in a text typeface, came first. Its most unusual feature was its head serif, a bisected quadrant of a circle. My aim was to see if its sharp beak would work with blunt, rectangular, foot serifs. Next, I wanted to see if I could construct a set of capital letters by following a similar design system. Rectangular serifs, or what we today call "slab serifs," were common in early roman printing types, particularly text types cut in Italy before 1500. Slab serifs are evident on both lowercase and uppercase characters in roman types of the Incunabula period, but they are seen mainly at the feet of the lowercase letters. The head serifs on lowercase letters of early roman types were usually angled. They were not arched, like mine. Oddly, there seems to be no actual historical precedent for my approach. Another characteristic of my arched serif is that the side opposite the arch is flat, not concave. Arched, concave serifs were used extensively in early italic types, a genre which first appeared more than a quarter century after roman types. Their forms followed humanistic cursive writing, common in Italy since before movable type was used there. Initially, italic characters were all lowercase, set with upright capitals (a practice I much admire and would like to see revived). Sloped italic capitals were not introduced until the middle of the sixteenth century, and they have very little to do with the evolution of humanist scripts. In contrast to the cursive writing on which italic types were based, formal book hands used by humanist scholars to transcribe classical texts served as a source of inspiration for the lowercase letters of the first roman types cut in Italy. While book hands were not as informal as cursive scripts, they still had features which could be said to be more calligraphic than geometric in detail. Over time, though, the copied vestiges of calligraphy virtually disappeared from roman fonts, and type became more rational. This profound change in the way type developed was also due in part to popular interest in the classical inscriptions of Roman antiquity. Imperial Roman letters, or majuscules, became models for the capital letters in nearly all early roman printing types. So it was, that the first letters in my typeface arose from pondering how shapes of lowercase letters and capital letters relate to one another in terms of classical ideals and geometric proportions, two pinnacles in a range of artistic notions which emerged during the Italian Renaissance. Indeed, such ideas are interesting to explore, but in the field of type design they often lead to dead ends. It is generally acknowledged, for instance, that pure geometry, as a strict approach to type design, has limitations. No roman alphabet, based solely on the circle and square, has ever been ideal for continuous reading. This much, I knew from the start. In the course of developing my typeface for text, innumerable compromises were made. Even though the finished letterforms retain a measure of geometric structure, they were modified again and again to improve their performance en masse. Each modification caused further deviation from my original scheme, and gave every font a slightly different direction. In the lower case letters especially, I made countless variations, and diverged significantly from my original plan. For example, not all the arcs remained radial, and they were designed to vary from font to font. Such variety added to the individuality of each style. The counters of many letters are described by intersecting arcs or angled facets, and the bowls are not round. In the capitals, angular bracketing was used practically everywhere stems and serifs meet, accentuating the terseness of the characters. As a result of all my tinkering, the entire family took on a kind of rich, familiar, coarseness - akin to roman types of the late 1400s. In his book, Printing Types D. B. Updike wrote: "Almost all Italian roman fonts in the last half of the fifteenth century had an air of "security" and generous ease extremely agreeable to the eye. Indeed, there is nothing better than fine Italian roman type in the whole history of typography." It does seem a shame that only in the 20th century have revivals of these beautiful types found acceptance in the English language. For four centuries (circa 1500 - circa 1900) Venetian Old Style faces were definitely not in favor in any living language. Recently, though, reinterpretations of early Italian printing types have been returning with a vengeance. The name Vendetta, which as an Italian sound I like, struck me as being a word that could be taken to signifiy a comeback of types designed in the Venetian style. In closing, I should add that a large measure of Vendetta's overall character comes from a synthesis of ideas, old and new. Hallmarks of roman type design from the Incunabula period are blended with contemporary concerns for the optimal display of letterforms on computer screens. Vendetta is thus not a historical revival. It is instead an indirect but personal digital homage to the roman types of punchcutters whose work was influenced by the example Jenson set in 1470. John Downer.