Worldly Even though it’s a new arrival, FS Brabo has seen the world. Designed by a Brazilian working in London and studying in Belgium under a Dutchman, it’s certainly well-travelled. And it was inspired by the extraordinary archive of early book typefaces at the world-renowned Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, while Fernando Mello was attending Frank Blokland’s Expert class Type Design course at the Plantin Institute of Typography. It was there that Fernando became engrossed in the collection of early metal type, matrices, punches and type samples by figures such as Garamond and Granjon. So much so that he took on the mighty task of developing ‘a beautiful, functional, serifed text font’ of his own. Heroic FS Brabo’s journey from sketch to font family took an epic three years, starting in Antwerp, continuing at Fontsmith in London, and reaching its conclusion back in Fernando’s home city of São Paulo. No wonder Fernando was reminded of another titanic face-off: that of Antwerp’s Roman hero of legend, Silvius Brabo, and the evil ogre, Antigoon. Brabo came to the town’s rescue after the tyrannical giant had been charging ships’ captains extortionate taxes and chopping off the hands of those who refused to pay up. Having finally downed Antigoon after a long and terrible duel, Brabo cut off the giant’s own hand and threw it into the river Scheldt, unwittingly giving the town its name: the Dutch for ‘hand-throw’ is hand werpen. What better way for Fernando to name his literary typeface than after the hero of Antwerp’s oldest tale? The garalde factor FS Brabo is not a revival, but a very much a contemporary, personal interpretation of a garalde – a class of typeface originating in the 16th century that includes Bembo, Garamond and Plantin, with characteristically rounded serifs and moderate contrast between strokes. Brabo’s ‘ct’ and ‘st’ ligatures, upper-case italic swashes and contextual ending ligatures – ‘as’, ‘is’, ‘us’ – all preserve the beauty and character of traditional typefaces, but its serifs are chunkier than a garalde. Their sharp cuts and squared edges give them a crispness at text sizes, helping to bring a beautifully bookish personality to hardworking modern applications. A workhorse with pedigree It may give the appearance of a simple, four-weight typeface, but FS Brabo has hidden depths beneath its simplicity and beauty. OpenType features such as cap italic swashes, contextual ending swashes – programmed only to appear at the end of words – and stylistic alternatives make this a complete and well-equipped typeface. Comprehensive testing was carried out at text and display sizes, too, to prevent counters from filling in. All of which makes FS Brabo a very modern take on a traditional workhorse serif typeface: colourful and versatile enough to adorn not just editorial projects but also signage, advertising and logotypes.

Almost a half of a millennium after being mistaken for the original 4th century Gothic alphabet and falsely labeled "barbaric" by the European Renaissance, the blackletter alphabet was still flourishing exclusively in early 20th century Germany, not only as an ode to Gutenberg and the country's rich printing history, but also as a continuous evolution, taking on new shapes and textures influenced by almost every other form of alphabet available. Blackletter would continue to go strong in Germany until just before the second World War, when it died a political death at the height of its hybridization. For almost 50 years after the war, blackletter was very rarely used in a prominent manner, but it continued to be seen sparely in a variety of settings, almost as a subliminal reminder of western civilization's first printed letters; on certificates and official documents of all kinds, religious publications, holiday cards and posters, to name a few. In the early 21st century, blackletter type has been appearing sporadically on visible media, but as of late 2005, it is not known how long the renewed interest will last, or even whether or not it will catch on at all. The last few years before World War II were arguably the most fascinating and creative in modern blackletter design. During those years, and as demonstrated with the grid-based Leather font, the geometric sans serif was influencing the blackletter forms, taking them away from their previous Jugendstil (Art Nouveau) hybridizations. Blackhaus is a digitization and elaborate expansion of a typeface called Kursachsen Auszeichnung, designed in 1937 by Peterpaul Weiss for the Schriftguss foundry in Dresden. This is one of very few designs from that time attempting to infuse more Bauhaus than Jugendstil into the Blackletter forms. This is why we used a concatenation of the words blackletter and Bauhaus to name this face. The result of injecting Bauhaus elements into blackletter turned out to be a typeface that is very legible and usable in modern settings, while at the same time harking back to the historical forms of early printing. The original 1937 design was just one typeface of basic letters and numbers. After digitizing and expanding it, we developed a lighter version, then added a few alternates to both weights. The Rough style came as a mechanically-grunged afterthought, due to current user demand for such treatment. Having the flexibility of 2 weights and many alternates of a blackletter typeface is not a very common find in digital fonts. More specifically, having the flexibility of 2 weights and alternates of a 20th century blackletter typeface is almost unheard of in digital fonts. So the Blackhaus family can be quite useful and versatile in an imaginative designer's hands.

Refinery is the newest font in the Evanston Collection of square typefaces. With a similar capital structure to Tavern and Alehouse, Refinery includes both lowercase and small caps, making it an ideal typeface for paragraph text settings. It also comes in a wide array of weights and widths, with 85 font files in total. DESIGN Refinery has it’s roots in early 20th century signage and saloon typography, but has been modernized - even future-ized - to fit the 21st century digital landscape. The design was aimed at providing a type family that could work in many modern design fields, from sports, tech and military to gaming, HUD, virtual reality and augmented reality. ENGINEERING Essentially. Refinery is a simple mono-linear square design has been expertly refined into an easy-reading sans serif typeface. It was designed to be used in both display and text settings. From hairline to black in ultra-narrow or extended, the wide array of weight and width options makes it easy to find the right font for each text need. SPECS Refinery not only includes 85 font files, but each one include a wide array of Opentype Extras that allow even further customization. • Stylistic Alternatives: Letters A W Y have a styling variation that rounds the pointed apex into a square curve. The S and 2 variation straightens the spine, making all curves in the alphabet read as 90º angles. • Small Capitals: A shortened version of the capitals for alternate header settings. • Titling Alternatives: In this typeface, this feature turns on lifted small caps. Take the small capitals, raise them to level with capitals and underline at the baseline. When multiple lowercase or small capital letters are typed in a row, the underlines connect, creating unique ligatures. • Figures: There are different figure styles for different text needs. Options include, proportional lining, tabular lining (for math), old style and small capitals. • Discretionary Ligatures: A little funk to this otherwise serious typeface. Letters with a long baseline or cap height stem - F, L, T - get elongated to hug a small capital vowel. Other ligatures include Co. and No. • Catchwords: These are common words that bring emphasis to a design. In English these words include ‘and’ ‘as’ ‘by’ ‘in’ ‘of’ ‘the’ ‘to’ ‘when’, among others. Refinery also includes multilingual catchwords of ‘el’ ‘la’ ‘oder’ ‘go’ ‘para’ ‘pour’ ‘und’ ‘y’, among others. For the full list, please check out the specimen images. EXTRAS To round the typeface off, a set of over 150 ornaments, icons, arrows, patterns and line breaks is included to provide complimentary graphics. These can be found in the Ornaments labelled font, it is recommended to use the Glyphs panel to select which text glyph is needed.

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