The dearJoe series of fonts had it’s origin somewhere around 1999, the year I created dearJoe 1, which was a first (and half-assed) attempt at converting my own handwriting into a working font. Being able to type in my own handwriting had always been a childhood fantasy, and even though I only partly understood the software, a working font was generated and I decided to put it on the internet for people to use. And that’s what they did: at this moment the dearJoe 1 font has been downloaded millions of times and can be found on just about anything, ranging from Vietnamese riksjas, a Tasmanian gym to a fancy chocolate store on 5th Avenue. The font is not something I am particularly proud of, but it started me of in building what later became the JOEBOB graphics font foundry. Inbetween creating other fonts, the dearJoe series has become a theme I revisit every once in a while, trying to create an update on how my handwriting evolved, along with my abilities in creating fonts that mimic actual handwriting. In the last decade or so I started implementing ligatures and alternate characters, which helped a lot in making something that can almost pass for actual handwriting.

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.

Kinfolk Pro is a font collection of six fonts. The main styles Rough and Smooth are extremely sturdy and bold brush fonts. As the name suggests the smooth style has clean, crisp contours and the rough version has the authentic strokes of a slightly dried out brush. Both versions have 606 glyphs and 4 alternate ornamented capital letters to play with, organized in stylistic sets. With Discretionary Ligatures and Contextual Alternates activated you can access elongated swashes by simply typing +1 (+2, +3, +4, +5) in front of any letter and =1 (=2, =3, =4, =5) at the back. On top of that Kinfolk Pro Rough and Smooth have some extra stand alone swashes that can be accessed via the glyphs panel or by typing _1, _2 ,_3 _4 _5. Kinfolk Pro Script is a fully connected script that goes together beautifully with the other styles. For the best connections, activate Discretionary Ligatures and Contextual Alternates. Additionally there is Kinfolk Pro Ornaments for extra swashes, ink blobs and interesting strokes. Kinfolk Pro Arrows and Kinfolk Pro Flowers both offer 230 glyphs to further juice up your designs. You'll need an Open Type savvy application to get the most out of Kinfolk Pro.

In June of 2004, Canada Type released Crucifix, a condensed three-tiers typeface that tried to bridge the gap between traditional blackletter forms and the traditional European gothics. The main goal of Crucifix was to have as many as 4 different variations on each letter form, so the original release consisted of three fonts: a main font with a standard character set, a small caps set, and a unicase variation. Now Canada Type presents the next generation of this typeface: Crucifix 2.0 and Crucifix Pro. This new version takes advantage of both Unicode and OpenType technologies to make Crucifix as versatile as ever. The PostScript Type 1 and the True Type version boast extended Latin character set support, including Western, Eastern and Central European, Turkish and Baltic, as well as two non-Latin scripts: Cryillic and Greek. The OpenType version, Crucifix Pro, goes even further by including all of above in one font, along with proper automation to accommodate on-the-fly ligatures, small caps, numerators, denominators, some fractions and a ton of stylistic and contextual alternates - all programmed to work with the latest OpenType-enabled programs. Unique, stark, and with more than 900 characters, Crucifix has that clinical sharpness and special dramatic wonder to make it perfect for mystery, gothic, and horror design settings.

Taglio’s name is derived from intaglio, which means “incised carving” or “an impression from an engraving”. Indeed, Taglio looks like an incised engraving with a contemporary calligraphic interpretation. The down strokes start with a single horizontal line that curves into a dual vertical line and ends with the same single line at the base. The dual elongated strokes create a bold overall impression but is literally twice as sophisticated than if the two lines were solid. That was exactly the goal in creating this font. We managed to create a font that is distinctive, elegant, and crisp that is also intentionally stencilled for more flexibility. For instance, it is ideal for laser cutting signage. One of the unique features in using the capital glyphs is that they stack perfectly without losing legibility, primarily because of the slanted ends of the dual vertical lines - see the example “Miami Fashion Week” display ad. Taglio’s unusual style was carefully crafted to come to life at display sizes. It is therefore ideal for use in branding fashion, restaurants, buildings, packaging, museums, signage, etc. An ideal pairing font is our WERK family which can be seen on some of the display ads below. Taglio has a sparkling and sophisticated personality that will absolutely delight!

'1812' type family is a revival and further development of the typeface '1812' by Lehmann Type Foundry (St. Petersburg). It was created for the centenary of the French invasion of Russia, known in Russia as the Patriotic War of 1812 along the lines of decorative engraved inscriptions and ornamented typefaces of that time, presumably by the artist Alexandre Benois. It was used mainly for the decoration of luxurious elegant publications. Later, in 1917, this typeface was used on the Russian Provisional Government banknotes. In the Soviet period of time '1812' appeared to be one of the few typefaces included in the first Soviet type standard OST 1337. It was produced for manual typesetting until the early 1990s. This typeface could be seen on Soviet letterheads, forms, posters and even air tickets. The digital version development was launched in 2010. The original version was supplemented with lowercase letters and alternative symbols, the extended Latin and Cyrillic alphabets were fully supported. The font was evolved into a family of 14 decorative styles which can refine any design giving it a festive and elegant but at the same time strict and nostalgic look. Despite its decorative nature, '1812' is perfectly readable in small emphasized text blocks due to its classic shape and careful spacing.

ATF Poster Gothic is an expansion of a typeface designed in 1934 by Morris Fuller Benton for American Type Founders. The one-weight design was a slightly condensed display companion to Benton’s ubiquitous Bank Gothic family. This new family of aggressively rectilinear headline types expands the design’s possibilities, offering 30 fonts. The all-cap design sports square corners in the counters, creating tension between angular and curved details; this feature, and the generally rectangular shape of the whole alphabet, makes ATF Poster Gothic distinctive on the page or screen, while its relationship to Bank Gothic makes it seem somehow familiar. Vertical strokes on the C, G, J, and S, as well as on several of the numerals, are cut off at an angle, which suggest the curves those strokes might typically display if the characters were less boxy in design and more along the lines of late-19th-century headline faces. Certain weights also recall the style of lettering used on athletic team jerseys, television crime dramas, action & adventure movie titles, and engraved stationery. With three widths and five weights, ATF Poster Gothic is distinctive and versatile at the same time. The full family is also available in a “Round” version, with corners subtly rounded for a softer, more “printed” feel.

Vintage sheet music for a song from the 1941 animated feature "Mr. Bug Goes to Town" featured a casual, hand-lettered inline type style on its cover page. Recreated as the digital font Go to Town JNL, this design is presented in all the imperfect glory of pen and ink lettering. Go to Town JNL is available in the regular inline version as well as a solid version. A bit about the cartoon: The project was created by the legendary Fleischer Studios in Miami, Florida (they had relocated from New York City), after they could not obtain the rights to adapt Maurice Maeterlinck's "The Life of the Bee". Beset by the expenses of relocating to Florida, growing production costs on the full-length feature cartoon and other problems; mid-way through the making of "Mr. Bug Goes to Town" the Fleischer brothers were forced to sell their studio to their distributor (Paramount Pictures) in order to continue in operation. It was released on Dec. 5, 1941 - just two days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The release [and subsequent re-release by Paramount as "Hoppity Goes to Town"] was a disappointing failure, earning [as late as 1946] only $241,000 of the initial cost of $713,511 it took to make the film.

Ahmed is a modern Arabic headline face, first produced by Linotype-Hell Ltd. in the early 1980s. Originally developed as a simplified face, its design recalls the inscriptional and decorative tile work lettering of the medieval period. The strong treatment of the tails of certain characters departs from the more traditional style of tapering these finials, introducing a modern feel to the design. The contrasting proportions of the tall vertical strokes and the rather elongated counters lend a monumental look to Ahmed, allowing its effective use in titling. During the later 1980s Ahmed was developed into a traditional typeface, with the introduction of medial forms to improve character spacing and balance. Recently, Ahmed has been converted into the OpenType font format, ensuring its continued popularity as a heading face for newspaper typesetting. The Ahmed typeface contains two weights, Ahmed and Ahmed Outline. Both of the OpenType fonts include Latin glyphs from Clearface Gothic Roman inside the font files, allowing a single font to set text in both most Western European and Arabic languages. The two Ahmed fonts include the Basic Latin character set and the Arabic character set, which supports Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. They include tabular and proportional Arabic, Persian, and Urdu numerals, as well as a set of tabular European (Latin) numerals.

Green Fairy is a chromatic font family highly ornamented for display purposes. Green Fairy’s characters have been specifically designed to accommodate its loops and ornaments following a modern typeface structure. Green Fairy has four chromatic weights: 1. Green Fairy Outline 2. Green Fairy Dots 3. Green Fairy Stencil 4. Green Fairy Full The outline weight has been created as the base or structure for the other weights. You can combine these weights as well as add colours to obtain multiple effects and type styles. Green Fairy has also three combined weights (combos) to simplify your work flow, for these occasions when you only want to use one single colour in your font: 5. Green Fairy Dots Combo 6. Green Fairy Stencil Combo 7. Green Fairy Full Combo GREEN FAIRY ORIGINS The origin of this typeface is the lettering I designed in October 2015 as part of my illustrated cocktail artwork called “Absinthe. La Fée Verte (The Green Fairy)”. Originally, this lettering only featured eight letters “AB·SINTHE” vector drawn in Illustrator. Right after creating the full-colour artwork, I designed a fountain-letterpress print version of it, in collaboration with Ladies of Letters, A.K.A. Carla Hackett and Amy Constable from Saint Gertrude Fine Printing. At the beginning of 2016 –and thanks to the project @36daysoftype– I found the motivation, and most importantly the deadline, to draw the rest of the twenty-six letters of the uppercase alphabet using Illustrator. I started 2017 having my first two calligraphy courses sold out, so I took this amazing opportunity to devote myself to Green Fairy for a few months. In February 2017, I purchased the font software Glyphs and I started to re-draw all twenty-six letters of the uppercase alphabet again. PRODUCTION PROCESS Green Fairy started being one weight, but quickly turned into a layered/chromatic font. Things were going more or less fine till I arrived to the Dots weight: 1) I started drawing squares following a grid; 2) Then, the squares turned into diamonds following the same grid; 3) Then, the grid wasn’t working so well on the round letters so I tried randomising the position of the diamonds but it didn’t work; 4) So I went back to the grid, and this time scaled down the size of the diamonds creating a visual half-tone effect. I spent over four weeks working on the Dots weight and I felt like I was in the middle of a very long tunnel and I couldn’t see the light at the end. I encountered many other problems along the way but by June 2017, I felt I was back on track again. I kept working, tweaking, re-drawing and re-adjusting, and then the diacritics came on board… And then more re-drawing, re-tweaking, re-adjusting and then numbers… And then spacing, symbols, and currencies… And then more spacing, kerning, contextual kerning for triplets… In September 2017 I told myself “that’s it, I’m going to finish it now!” But guess what? More re-tweaking, testing, hinting, testing, rendering, testing… For those of you not familiarized with typeface design, it is extremely time consuming and it requires a lot of hard work, focus and determination. This project could not have been possible without the help of these generous professionals: Jose Manuel Urós, typeface designer based in Barcelona and my teacher twice in the past; Jamie Clarke, freelance letterer and typeface designer who has released a couple of chromatic fonts recently; Troy Leinster, Australian full-time typeface designer living and working in New York City; Noe Blanco, full-time typeface designer and hinting specialist based in Catalonia; And Nicole Phillips, typographer currently relocating from Australia to New Zealand. To all of you: THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

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.

Among the countless typefaces available today, the Modern Face style is relatively underrepresented. During the 19th century and then later with the competition from the mechanized hot metal types and film setting, a number of attractive headline types appeared in this style. For text, however, the available types were limited to those based on tried and true classics like Walbaum, Didot and Bodoni, which were created between 1780 and 1830, as well as a few variations from the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The demand for new Modern text types remained nonexistant until the 1960s. Such was the situation when the Haas'sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas Type Foundry) commissioned me to come up with a concept and sketches of a new hot metal type. I was able to convince the director of the foundry that there was a niche to be filled with contemporary Modern typography. Another reason for the production of a new type was of a technical nature: the introduction of a new setting technique should not be limited to existing typefaces, but instead should lead to innovative text types suited to the demands of the new applications. André Gürtler, Basilia's designer: I began to work on the concept and initial designs of the new text type in 1968. I wanted to give the type a classical look, expressed above all in the strong stroke contrast between the robust verticals and fine horizontal strokes and serifs. This is one of the main characteristics of Modern typography.""This new typeface, Basilia, is distinguished by its soft, open appearance as well as a number of details which together mark a departure from historical models. For example, it has nothing of Bodoni's round letters and their angular, narrow spacing, and displays instead round forms with a much softer stroke in the curves. It was very important to me to avoid the Modern characteristic of stiff, vertical, grid-like strokes and to create instead a lighter, more transparent type. I retained the Modern style by using straight horizontal serifs at right angles to the strokes to still give the type its sense of rigidity." Three sketches for Basilia (normal, italic, and bold) were finished in 1973. Only the 9-point size was produced at first. In the following years, basic weights were made and adapted to filmsetting."