The history of Able’s connection with the Harry Potter phenomenon is really up in the air. It’s a catch-22 in this business - you either promote your own work and negotiate expensive exclusive licenses, or you work with a promoter and sell your designs to anyone and everyone. It could have been an in-house designer at Rowling’s publisher, Scholastic, or a freelancer who proposed Able for the headings and such. The responsible party licensed it from T26, and JK Rowling’s storytelling made it a star. (I suppose it’s ironic that there’s a whole lot of unwritten history in the typography business.) Able’s rise to fame really is a classic love story between reading and type design. If the books weren’t so popular, Able might still be waiting for some Mexican fast food chain to pick it up for packaging design. The movie deal certainly made the font all the more recognizable, what with its merchandising campaign. Popularity can also cripple a great decorative face. It’s always being recognized as “The Harry Potter Font.” It might just have to wait a few decades for the Potter phenomenon to subside to be freed from the “Chamber of Pigeonholed Fonts.” In the meantime, I’m sure that a lot of fledgling graphic design apprentices are reading their new Potter books, being charmed by the idea of type design when they’re not turning the pages too fast to notice.

Franz Kafka’s manuscripts have always been a source of inspiration for designer Julia Sysmäläinen. At first she was just interested in literary aspects but later she noticed that content and visual form can not be separated in the work of this ingenious writer. Analyzing Kafka’s handwriting at the Berlin National Library, Julia was inspired to design the typeface FF Mister – by now a well known classic. Over the years, FF Mister K became a handsome typeface family and even produced offspring: the Josef K Patterns. Some of Kafka’s most expressive letterforms were the starting point for these decorative ornaments. How do the Patterns work? Outlines and fillings correspond to the uppercase and the lowercase letters on your keyboard. You can use them separately or layer them on top of each other. If you write a line of “pattern-text” in lowercase and repeat it underneath in uppercase you get a row of fillings followed by a row of outlines. Now you can color them and then set line space = 0 to get a single line of layered colored ornaments. Alternatively, activating OpenType / stylistic set / stylistic alternates will also unite the two lines to a single layered line. Further magic can be done with OpenType / contextual alternates turned on. On the gallery page of this font family is a downloadable Josef K Patterns.pdf with an alphabetical overview of forms. Hundreds of patterns are possible … we’d love to see some of yours and present them here on the website!

With open palms, place your hands together at the center of your chest, close your eyes and bow the head slightly. Namaste! Welcome to a beautiful spiritual journey. Namaste is a font collection, designed by Coto Mendoza, consisting of two variants: a capital sans and a script font (based on watercolor calligraphy strokes). Each variant comes in 5 weights—Thin, Light, Regular, Bold and Black—and 2 versions: Essential and Pro. The script font, in its Pro version, provides a wide range of OpenType features such as swashes, alternates, ligatures and different stylistic sets. The Namaste family also includes a set of ornaments inspired by Hindu and Buddhist symbols—that Coto Mendoza saw virtually everywhere on her trip to India—like Mandalas and Yantras, and others found in textiles and monuments. Namaste is the perfect choice for wellness, healing and therapy oriented products. Its smooth shape and soft curves allow the user to create beautiful designs for essential oils, bath salts, quartz crystals, mindfoodness, candles, incense and aromatherapy products packaging. The font is well-suited for publishing design (short text); self-help and healing handbooks; tarot and divination cards; and women’s empowerment and spirituality publications. Namaste is an ideal typeface for yoga (and other body disciplines) center branding; holistic centers; and group meditation, womb blessing and circle of women invitations. Namaste is a beautiful journey full of love and inspiration. Namaste: a spiritual journey.

Charming young Italian lady named Donna Lucia that is my handwritten script font. Donna Lucia is feminine and graceful calligraphic handwritten script font as plus a Symbols font with 52 lovely hand-drawn swashes and illustrations. Donna Lucia script is perfect for branding, logos, wedding stationery, social media, packaging, and other projects that require an elegant touch. Donna Lucia feminine font includes also Cyrillic glyphs. Uppercase lowercase and lowercase with flourishes. Donna Lucia script contains a full set of uppercase letters and 3 full sets of lowercase letters, (standard, alternative, and initial form) and 27 ligatures - which can be used to create a handwritten calligraphy look. Donna Lucia Symbols is a font with over 52 hand-drawn elements, illustrations, and swashes and can help to make your design more original. Combine and merge swashes and illustrations to create your own designs and make borders, frames, dividers, logos, and more (just use A-Z or a-z and 0-9 keys in the included Donna Lucia Symbols font). A different symbol is assigned to each uppercase or lowercase standard character, so you do not need graphics software, just type the letter you need. Multilingual Support for 31 languages: Latin glyphs for Afrikaans, Albanian, Basque, Bosnian, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Malay, Norwegian Bokmål, Portuguese, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, Welsh, Zulu. And Cyrillic glyphs support for Russian, Belorussian, Bulgarian and Ukrainian languages.

From the designer, Tim Ahrens... I started designing this typeface about half a year after learning that Frutiger was not a new brand of sweets and that Garamond is not the name of a fragrance. In time it became clear that designing a sans serif must always be considered as a transformation of traditional serifed typefaces instead of deriving it from typefaces that have been derived from others which have been derived from others again. I did not want Aroma to be one of those odourless and tasteless typefaces wich sacrifice a natural feeling and the characteristic shapes of the letters to neutrality. I think that beauty often evolves unintentionally. For example, I am fascinated by the beauty of airfoils, which are actually a careful transformation of a bird's wing. I love their anorganic and abstract shape which still bears the essence and all the complexity of what they are modelled on. This is exactly the formal concept behind Aroma. Many of the outlines are actually parabolics. The small r, for example, consists exclusively of straight lines and parabolics. I decided to give Aroma more stroke contrast than it is usual for sans serif designs. Many strokes are slightly convex, which gives the font an anorganic feeling. The font was intended to have a feel similar to the antiqua. More specifically, it is based on Old Style Faces. The character of those fonts, which were cut during the Renaissance, is still inherent to Aroma.

Parfait Script Pro takes its inspiration from Spencerian script and pointed brush lettering. Technical Parfait Script has more than 850 glyphs. It’s up to you to choose, it’s up to you to have fun. Parfait would love to play. The font has lots of alternates. They'll certainly either embellish your words or provide more legibility. The alternates are: Standard Ligatures; Contextual Alternates; Discretionary Ligatures; Swashes; Stylistic Alternates; Titling Alternates; Terminal Forms; Historical Alternates * ; Stylistic Ligatures; Stylistic Set 1 and 2 * ; Ornaments. (* These Alternates are only included in Parfait Script Pro). Parfait Script Pro contains everything. Advice: Use designing programs that support the OpenType features named above, so you can easily alternate glyphs. However, for those who don't have this kind of program, or for those who don't want the entire font, we offer Parfait Script Pro as several separate fonts: Parfait Script Standard (the best for text); Parfait Script Contextual (decorative); Parfait Script Stylistic (decorative); Parfait Script Swashes (for giving the last letter a nice touch); Parfait Script Titling (both decorative and more Roman); Parfait Script Endings (for giving the word the look of a signature); and Parfait Script Ornaments (a set of swirls). These versions of Parfait Script Pro are Open-Type programmed too, in order to include the Standard, Discretional and Stylistic Ligatures. Pssst!... Take a look at Parfait Script Pro’s Guide in the gallery section in order to discover this beauty!

Condemned is a light destructive sans typeface created from an old damaged ATF Specimen Book from 1912, and looks reminiscent of poorly transferred rub off type. It contains a complete alternate core character set for a subtly randomized look. Here's what's included with Condemned: 684 glyphs - including Capitals, Lowercase , Numerals, Punctuation and an extensive character set that covers multilingual support of latin based languages. (see the 5th graphic for a preview of the characters included) Contextual Alternates that auto-switches between Capitals & Alternate Capitals, Lowercase and Alternate Lowercase, as well as Numerals and Alternate Numerals for visual randomness. To access the Contextual Alternates feature, you will need to be using software with Opentype compatibility otherwise you can access the alternate glyphs via a Glyphs panel. Stylistic Alternates feature that swaps all standard Capitals, Lowercase, and Numerals with their Alternates Alternate Capitals and Lowercase are complete with all international accented characters Font is provided in TTF & OTF formats. The TTF format is the standard go to for most users, although the OTF and TTF function exactly the same. Here's why Condemned is for you: You're into legible but distressed typestyle that imitates a random distress to it You love condensed gothics, and want to pair them with a distressed condensed gothic You're a fan of old Letraset/Transfertype rub off lettering You're recreating weathered military ephemera and want a typeface with some tooth to it You just like to collect quality fonts to add to your design arsenal

The Phantom Isles: Retro Tiki Font A Textured Retro Font Inspired by Tropical Tiki Style and South Sea Adventures! The Phantom Isles is a hand-drawn font inspired by 1950s Tiki culture, tales of exotic locations and south sea adventures. It features the textured look of weathered wood and is the perfect choice for book covers, movie titles, theme parks or vintage themed events. The font includes a complete set of uppercase and lowercase characters, along with numbers, punctuation, symbols and language support. You’ll also find a set of specially illustrated underlines, shapes and icons including flora and fauna, old rope, skulls and more. A Brief History of Tiki Culture Originating from Māori mythology, a tiki is a wooden or stone carving that represents deified ancestors found in most Polynesian cultures. The mainstream and commercialised Tiki Culture that became popular across America from the 1930s to 50s was inspired by the sentimental appeal of an idealised South Pacific, particularly Hawaii, as viewed through the experiences of those who had visited such areas during World War II and cinematic depictions of beautiful scenery, forbidden love and the potential for danger. Over time it selectively incorporated more cultural elements of other regions that affected Polynesia, such as Southeast Asia. The Americanised form of Tiki Culture maintains a dedicated following today, particularly among those interested in 1950s graphic and interior design, history and the escapist lounge aesthetic it inspires. Learn more about the history of Tiki and Polynesian culture.

Karl-Heinz Lange presented his first drafts of Rotola during a Typoart® type design competition in 1985 under the name "Boutique". A year later, Norbert du Vinage, former manager of the type design department, integrated "Boutique" in his production plan. Due the Fall of the Wall, it took about 18 years until Lange finished this font family in cooperation with Elsner+Flake. Karl-Heinz Lange was born on July 29, 1929 in Wiesenkirch in West Prussia. He was enrolled in the Humanistic Gymnasium at Elbing from 1939 to 1945 and changed to the Wernigerode High School after his family had to flee to central Germany. From 1949 to 1951, Karl-Heinz Lange studied at the Werkkunstschule Halle, where one of his teachers was Professor Post. After 1951, he continued his studies at the Hochschule for Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig with an emphasis on book design. He received his diploma in 1955 with distinction based on his design of a hot metal typeface. From 1956 to 1961, Karl-Heinz Lange worked as a lecturer for Type and Commercial Graphics at the Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst in Magdeburg. From 1961 to 1963, he taught at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig, and finally as a freelance commercial designer in Magdeburg. He worked on a variety of assignments, one of which was the design of trick films. From 1969 to 1976 he took the position of Artistic Director of the Henschelverlag, Berlin; from 1976 to 1994 he was Professor of Type and Typography at the Fachschule für Werbung und Gestaltung in Berlin; and, until 2004, he taught at various institutes for advanced professional education. From 2005 to 2007 he taught at the Fachhochschule Magdeburg/Stendal. Karl-Heinz Lange was awarded the second prize at the "International Type Design Contest 1971" for a headline typeface, and, in 1984, at the XI. Biannual of Graphic Design in Brno, he won a Silver Medal for the design of his typeface family Publica. He created the telephone book typeface Minima and re-designed the Typoart Super Grotesk® (Arno Drescher, 1930) as well as the Newspaper typeface Magna® by Herbert Thannhaeuser for the use on digital typesetting systems. To the day of his death on June 29, 2010, Karl-Heinz Lange lived and worked as a type designer. Among others, he closely followed the designs of the typefaces which were developed under his guidance for Typoart®: "Publica®", "Typoart Super Grotesk®" and "Minima®" which he launched as "Publicala", "Minimala" and "Superla" in 2009. In cooperation with Elsner+Flake, he developed the Typeface family "Rotola" between 2006 and 2009 as well as the script families of the "Viabella®" series. To the end, he followed the development of his first typeface, the "Diplom Antiqua", which he also wanted to bring to market together with Elsner+Flake.