After doing this for so many years, one would think my fascination with the old history of writing would have mellowed out by now. The truth is that alongside being a calligraphy history buff, I'm a pop technology freak. Maybe even keener on the tech thing, since I just can't seem to get enough new gadgets. And after working with type technologies for so many years, I'm starting to think that writing and design technologies as we now know them, being about 2.5 post-computer generations, keep becoming more and more detached from what the very old humanity arts/tasks they essentially want to facilitate. In a world where command-z is a frequently used key combination, it’s difficult to justify expecting a Morris-made book or a Zaner-drawn sentence, but accidental artistic “mutations” become welcome, marketable features. When fluid pens were introduced, their liquid saturation influenced type design to a great extent almost overnight an influence professional designers tend to play down. Now round stroke endings are a common sight, and the saturation is so clean and measured, unlike any liquid-paper relationship possible in reality. Some designers even illustrate their work by overlaying perfect circles at stroke ends, in order to illustrate how “geometric” their work was. Because if it’s measured with precise geometry, it’s got to be meaningful design. And once in a while, by a total freak accident, the now-cherished mutations prove to have existed long before the technology that caused them. Rolling Pen was cued by just such a thing: A rounded, circular, roll-flowing calligraphy from the late nineteenth century seemingly one of those experimental takes on what inspired Business Penmanship, another font of mine. Looking at it now it certainly seems to be friendlier, more legible, and maybe even more practical and easier to execute than the standard business penmanship of those days, but I guess friendliness and simplicity were at odds with the stiff manner business liked to present itself back then, so that kind of thing remained buried in the professional penman’s oddities drawer. It would be quite a few years before all this curviness and rounding were thought of as symbolic of graceful movement, which brought such a flow closer to the idea of fine art. Even though in this case the accidental mutation just happens to not be a mutation after all, the whole technology-transforms-application argument still applies here. I'm almost sure “business” will be the last thing on people’s minds when they use this font today. One extreme example of that level of disconnect between origin and current application is shown here, with the so-called business penmanship strutting around in gloss and neon. Rolling Pen is another cup of mine that runneth over with alternates, swashes, ligatures, and other techy perks. To explore its full potential, please use it in a program that supports OpenType features for advanced typography. Enjoy the new Rolling Pen designed by Ale Paul with Neon’s visual poetry by Tomás García.

The art of paper folding in dingbat form. The uppercase alphabet is made up of origami animals and the lowercase offers those shapes decorated in traditional origami paper patterns. Full patterns, flowers, and partial foldings fill out the symbols and numbers.

A revival of old hand painted sign in Old Jaffa, from the mid of 20th century.

Some old broken characters. It reminds me of old labels on walls, streets or on tanks.

Mayence is the French name of Mainz, German city where Johannes Gutenberg was born. It's a manuscript font inspired in the author's calligraphy, with an angular structure, marked by a certain impulsiveness. Besides being a continuous-line font, Mayence explores some deviations and imperfections in the calligraphy practice, as accumulations of paint and anomalies in the thickness variation, characteristics which gives it more naturality. Its main difference is the set of over 430 ligatures (Premium version), based on the research and selection of important character sequences, rather frequent in several languages. For this, a study was done about the diphthongs, triphthongs and di-tri-tetra-pentagraphs more common in languages such as English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Hungarian, Croatian, among others. Ligatures with up to 2 characters are enabled by default and with more than 2 characters are enabled by the Discretionary Ligatures option. Mayence also contains several ligatures based on common words in English and Spanish, exclusive ligatures with numbers and another standard, discretionary, historic and Unicode ligatures. It has 9 different ampersands (&), which can be chosen by the user according to the application context. When you enable the Titling Alternates (in OpenType-savvy programs), these 9 ampersand styles are converted to their forms of seal, with different purposes of use. To enrich your graphic applications, Mayence brings the Ornaments Version, for construction of impressive lines, borders, textures and the geometric shapes that you want, according to your creativity! To see the features available in each version, open or download the User Guide pdf, in the Gallery section. All text fonts are available in OpenType PS format and have extended character set to support CE, Baltic, Turkish, as well as Western European languages and additional Celtic characters.

Detailed guided tour available here. Port is an experimental Didone typeface with a modern twist, inspired in the well known forms of typography masters such as Bodoni and Didot and the exuberance and elegance of calligraphy typefaces. Port melds the straight lines and strong contrasts of the Didone typefaces with the elegant lines of calligraphy in a geometric way, resulting in exuberant characters with geometric swashes that can be combined in countless ways. The result of this experiment is Port, an unique and rich display typeface meant to be used on big sizes and it’s main perk is the amount of alternative characters it features. Port is Open-Type programmed and includes hundreds of alternates, from swashes to titling alternates, ligatures and stylistic sets with each character having a thin version of itself, giving complete freedom to all your creative needs. Port is available in several flavours: Port Regular, being the base version and featuring the whole base character set; Port Regular Decorated, featuring richer forms and containing more ornamentated and more extravagant characters; Port Medium and Port Medium Regular, designed for the occasions you need a bit more thickness and the decoration variants: Port Ornaments, containing a wide set of elements meant for the creation of fillets, vignettes and fleurons, resulting in an almost infinite number of possible combinations to embellish your designs and Port Words, a set of some of the most common words used in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese. It’s strongly recommended that you use it on big sizes, for better performance you can also set the Photoshop text anti aliasing settings to Strong when you type, for a better understanding of all the uses of Port and the full character list I recommend the reading of the manual.

Malabar is a type family for extensive text. Its design was developed with a nod toward newspapers. Malabar's characters are seriffed and of the Old Style genre. A strong diagonal axis is apparent within the curves. Sturdy serifs help strengthen the line of text in small point sizes, as well as define the overall feeling of the face. Malabar's x-height is very high, a deliberate choice that makes the most important parts of lowercase letters visibly larger in tiny settings. The height of the capital letters is also rather diminutive, allowing for better character fit, as well as eliminating a bit of clumsiness in German, which often includes quite a few uppercase letters. Diacritical marks and additional alphabetic forms required by many Western, Central, and Eastern European languages are naturally a part of the character set, including those needed in the Baltic states, for Romanian, and for Turkish. Malabar's accents are bold and direct, sitting well with their base glyphs. The family includes three weights, each with a companion Italic. Malabar Regular is equipped with small caps, and both it and Malabar Italic include oldstyle figures. All members of the family have both proportional and tabular-width lining figures, as well as special variants of certain punctuation marks vertically adjusted for all-caps text setting. Malabar is informed both by contemporary ideas of typeface design (sheared terminals, the wider-drawn s) as well as by 16th-century masters. Malabar Heavy and Heavy Italic are very loud; their blackness almost shouts out from the page. The Regular's wedge serifs become more slab-ish in nature as the letters' weight increases. Malabar Heavy and Heavy Italic are best relegated to headline use only. Malabar Bold and Bold Italic may be used for text emphasis, a job for which the Heavy is to dark. Malabar received a Certificate of Excellence in Type Design at the Type Directors Club of New York TDC2 competition in 2009.

Maclean's is a weekly Canadian newsmagazine with a broad editorial mission. A typical issue covers everything from violence on the other side of the globe to the largest pumpkin grown in a local county. In 2001, Maclean's invited Rod McDonald to become part of the design team to renovate" the 96-year-old publication. The magazine wanted to offer its readers a typographic voice that was professional, clean, and easy to read. Above all, the typeface had to be able to speak about the hundreds of unrelated subjects addressed in each issue while remaining believable and uncontrived. A tall order, perhaps? Now add in that this would be the first text typeface ever commissioned by a Canadian magazine. McDonald, who some have called Canada's unofficial "typographer laureate," took on the challenge. McDonald used two historic models as the basis for Laurentian's design: the work of French type designer Claude Garamond, and that of the English printer and type founder, William Caslon. From Garamond Laurentian acquired its humanist axis, crisp serifs and terminals that mimic pen strokes. Caslon's letters are less humanistic, with a more marked contrast in stroke weight and serifs that appear constructed rather than drawn. These traits also made their mark on Laurentian. Using these two designs as a foundation, McDonald drew Laurentian with the narrow text columns and small type sizes of magazine composition in mind. He gave his letters strong vertical strokes and sturdy serifs, a robust x-height and a slightly compressed character width A tall order, per McDonald's genius is evident in the face's legibility, quiet liveliness and in the openness of the letters. The result is a typeface that not only met Maclean's demanding design brief, but also provides exceptional service in a wide variety of other applications. Laurentian is available in three weights of Regular, Semi Bold and Bold, with complementary italics for the Regular and Semi Bold, and a suite of titling caps."

ATF Franklin Gothic® A new take on an old favorite Franklin Gothic has been the quintessential American sans for more than a century. Designed by Morris Fuller Benton and released in 1905 by American Type Founders, Franklin Gothic quickly stood out in the crowded field of sans-serif types, gaining an enduring popularity. Benton’s original design was a display face in a single weight. It had a bold, direct solidity, yet conveyed plenty of character. A modern typeface in the tradition of 19th-century grotesques, Franklin Gothic was drawn with a distinctive contrast in stroke weight, giving it a unique personality among the more mono-linear appearance of later geometric and neo-grotesque sans-serif types. Franklin Gothic has been interpreted into a series of weights before, most notably with ITC Franklin Gothic. But as the original type was just a bold display face (later accompanied by a few similarly bold widths and italics), how Benton’s design is expanded to multiple weights and styles as a digital type family can vary significantly. Benton designed several gothic faces that harmonize with one another, including Franklin Gothic, News Gothic, and Monotone Gothic, that can serve as models for new interpretations of his work. With ATF Franklin Gothic, Mark van Bronkhorst looked to Benton’s Monotone Gothic—originally a single typeface in a regular weight, and similar to Franklin Gothic in its forms—as the basis for lighter styles. ATF Franklin Gothic may appear familiar given its heritage, but is a new design offering a fresh take on Benton’s work. The text weights are wider and more open than some previous Franklin Gothic interpretations, and as a result are quite legible as text, at very small sizes, and on screen. ATF Franklin Gothic maintains the warmth and the spirit of a Benton classic while offering a suite of fonts tuned precisely for contemporary appeal and utility. The 18-font family offers nine weights with true italics, a Latin-extended character set, and a suite of OpenType features. Download the PDF specimen for ATF Franklin Gothic.

The four weight semi-condensed Bartholemé family came into existence as a family expansion based on the designer's earlier concept, Bartholemé Open. This hybrid family was inspired by and loosely based on a number of contemporary mid-twentieth century type concepts having Old Face or Modern influence. Those inspirational type designs were primarily designed for various proprietary photolettering technologies of the time. The award-winning* Bartholemé Open and its companion design Bartholemé small capital open were inspired by various Shaded, Inline and Handtooled type models from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Most of those inspirational type designs were designed as titling fonts with all capital sets only. To set it apart from the earlier models, Bartholemé Open is semi-condensed intentionally designed with a lowercase. Design qualities include a large x- height, tightly curved ample counters, crisp serifs and tight bracketing. The overall plan of the family was originally intended for display usage in titling and short passages of text. At higher output resolutions all fonts read well at smaller point sizes. The Bartholemé family works well on its own, but also is compatible with type styles possessing qualities that complement or enhance its own. The Bartholemé family consists of a Regular weight complementing a Bold weight, along with Medium complementing an Extra Bold weight. The companion true-drawn italics are based on the Bartholemé roman design. * Award for Design Excellence bukva: raz! Type Design Competition of the Association Typographique Internationale, 2001

Capitolium was designed in 1998 at the request of the Agenzia romana per la preparatione del Giubileo for the Jubilee of the Roman Catholic Church in 2000. This type design was the central part of the project for a wayfinding and information system to guide pilgrims and tourists through Rome. Capitolium also continues Rome’s almost uninterrupted two-thousand-year-old tradition of public lettering . It is a modern typeface for the twenty-first century and strongly related to the traditions of Rome. Soon after the completion of this project Unger began contemplating the possibility of bringing the atmosphere of this design to newspapers. Though Capitolium works well in most modern production processes and also on screens, it is too fragile for newsprint. For newspapers sturdier shapes were required as well as more characters to a line of text, and Capitolium News has a bigger x-height than Capitolium. Capitolium News is a thoroughly modern newsface, with classic letterforms linked to a strong tradition. Capitolium News for running text comes in the variations regular, italic, semibold, semibold italic, bold and bold italic. As is possible with most of Unger’s type designs, Capitolium News can be condensed and expanded without any harm to the letterforms. The update to this beautiful font family, Capitolium News, includes the addition of over 250 glyphs featuring full Latin A language support, new ligatures, 4 sets of numerals, arbitrary fractions and superiors/inferiors. Furthermore, kerning was added and fine tuned for better performance.

The Morgan Project can be considered a big type family with ‘many styles’ or a set of different types that match with each other. For me it’s one typeface with different versions with deliberate and visible differences according to the propose to which each version was created. The design started in 2000 as a display type with the design of the Morgan Tower, to which more two display versions were added; Morgan Poster and Morgan Big — all together the make our: FTF Morgan Display Kit 1. All three versions consist only in uppercase with alternate letters in the lowercase and a set of special ligatures. Morgan Tower has four variants that differ in width/weight, Morgan Poster has six variants (often called styles), three weights in upright and oblique and Morgan Big has twelve, six weights in upright and oblique. Lately, the FTF Morgan Tex Kit 1 was added. Apropriate versions to use in text setting. Both versions, FTF Morgan Sans and FTF Morgan Sans Condensed share the same structure and character mapping. Four variants each; regular, bold, oblique and bold oblique with a large character set including: small caps, lining and old style figures (here called Office figures) — both tabular —, small caps lining figures, mathematical symbols and fraction figures, and, a set of foreign characters expanding the possibilities of use for a wider range of languages. Characters are distributed in six different font layouts: Lining, Office, Expert, Caps, Figures & Pi.

Joachim Müller-Lancé's Uppercut is a rather sporting fellow, originally developed for the Krav Maga training center of San Francisco (Krav Maga is a simple and efficient self-defense system that has become equally popular in Hollywood and with law enforcement). Joachim has spent several years training, hitting things and people whenever he needs a break from kerning. Uppercut can be seen on the school's t-shirts and other articles. Despite bearing the same moniker as an upwards punch to the chin, the name actually fell together quite naturally as Uppercut is an all uppercase typeface, and the word "cut" is also historically used to describe a type style in hot metal type. For this slanted look, "Angle" felt just right (with thanks to Mia McHatton). The design idea sprang from pencil sketches for the center's new identity. Uppercut's shapes are not calligraphic or handwritten, more like lettering seen in comics or sports logos. Its brush movements are imaginary, not too literally brushy. During development, details were simplified and reduced until a bit of a cut-paper feel emerged, but more fluid like writing. The shapes are economical and efficient; simplicity makes the font versatile, holding up in small as well as big sizes. Uppercut is decidedly analog, muscular but not bulky, with the fluid but determined movements of a boxer or martial artist - not theatrical but powerful, fast, confident and dynamic. Well... it has punch. In the proportions, there is emphasis on a strong upper edge "keeping its guard up", while several stems protrude downward, giving the impression of leaping or being "light on the feet". Use Uppercut to pick up the pace, add snap, verve and drive - on movie posters for action and adventure, to advertise your dojo, rumble or prizefight, racing team or tuning shop, or invite friends to your barbecue with old time rock'n'roll and homemade hot pepper sauce.

Designed over three years after the second World War, and published in 1949 by the Nebiolo foundry, Normandia was Alessandro Butti’s take on the fat face. As it usually was with Butti’s designs, this face effectively injected a catchy yet expertly calculated calligraphic spin into its source of inspiration — which was the essentially geometric/deco, thicker model of Bodoni’s very popular aesthetic. The metal Normandia saw some widespread use for a handful of years after its publication, not least because of the multitude of sizes in which it was available. It stepped out of the limelight by the mid-1950s, due to a combination of the popularity of cold type and Nebiolo’s refusal to retool its faces for new technologies. It was copied by a few small film typesetting outfits on both sides of the Atlantic, but never really found its way back to the mainstream. By the time computer type became the norm, Normandia was pretty much relegated to a type historian’s collection of anecdotes. This digital update of the classic series revives and refines the three original metal designs (Tonda/Regular, Corsiva/Italic, and Contornata/Outline) and expands the character set to more than 600 glyphs per font, including small caps, six types of figures, fractions and nut fractions, a full set of f-ligatures, some stylistic alternates, and other fine typography niceties.

In 1931, The Times of London commissioned a new text type design from Stanley Morison and the Monotype Corporation, after Morison had written an article criticizing The Times for being badly printed and typographically behind the times. The new design was supervised by Stanley Morison and drawn by Victor Lardent, an artist from the advertising department of The Times. Morison used an older typeface, Plantin, as the basis for his design, but made revisions for legibility and economy of space (always important concerns for newspapers). As the old type used by the newspaper had been called Times Old Roman," Morison's revision became "Times New Roman." The Times of London debuted the new typeface in October 1932, and after one year the design was released for commercial sale. The Times New Roman World Version is an extension of the original Times New Roman with several other scripts like with the Helvetica World fonts. It is part of the Windows Vista system. The following code pages are supported:1250 Latin 2: Eastern European 1251 Cyrillic 1253 Greek 1254 Turkish 1255 Hebrew 1256 Arabic Note: The Roman and Bold versions include the arabic scripts but they are not part in the corresponding italic versions. 1257 Windows Baltic 1258 Windows Vietnamese

Starx is a variable display typeface with angular lines, offering a futuristic and dynamic aesthetic. It consists of three axes: angular, rounded, and slanted. The bold version embodies a strong and high-tech expression, while the italic and rounded versions convey a dynamic, sporty, and futuristic impact.

Saviola – Modern Display Font with all caps style and bold. You can combine a unique uppercase and lowercase, so it looks like natural. And this font perfect for signature, logo, branding, poster, band, apparel, photography, title, social media post, ad banner, book cover, product packaging, and advertising

Wrong is all about the improv. Made with tape segments this font has a real DIY feel to it. It’s bold, solid and square-jawed. Its modular appearance gives it a constructed strength and it's available with two sets of caps and stacks of attitude as standard.

Divine Instinct is a cool, bold and authentic blackletter font. Masterfully designed to become a true favorite, this font has the potential to bring each of your creative ideas to the highest level! this font contains : custom upper cases custom lower cases custom numbers default poncuation marks

WALLNUTT CORPS is a cool, bold and powerful super modern unicase font, designed for maximum visual and emotional impact. It's great for social media, headlines, large-format print, editorial, branding, posters, fashion designs and websites — everything that strives for being confident and yolo. Definitely has a personality!

Introducing Destone - A bold font with 2 styles: Regular & Slab. Destone combines attractive curves with a fresh urban edge; delivering a stylish script which is guaranteed to add an eye-catching appeal to your logo designs, brand imagery, handwritten quotes, product packaging, merchandise & social media posts.

Presta is a variable weight sans serif typeface made up of 12 fonts from thin and condensed to wide and bold. Included in the variable font are over 500 alternate glyphs for creative customization. 12 fonts total 5 font weights Upper / lowercase glyphs Multilingual Over 5000 glyphs

Nombueang is an informal headline typeface with a bold appearance and loop-headed Thai letters, giving it a fun, friendly, and warm feeling. It is suitable for use in various media and is especially effective in emphasizing special importance, such as in posters, packaging, and more.

A 1940s travel poster for the Florida East Coast Railway (which then carried passengers but is now a freight line) had the railroad’s name hand lettered in a bold Art Deco sans. This inspired Passenger Train JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Thornback is a hand-drawn font that uses quick, scribbled strokes to create it's slightly messy sans-serif characters. The detailed letters make it a good choice for headlines but it's also bold enough to add a homemade touch to smaller text blocks while keeping things legible.

Minangrasa is a blackletter inspired by traditional houses in West Sumatra, Indonesia which are shaped like cow horns. It's bold and fun with a retro twist. Using all caps results in very stylish text, while combining capital letters produces text that is very easy to read.

Typha Latifolia is a plant of the swamps from the Northern Hemisphere. It is characterized by its high rangy leaves. Typha Latifolia is also a font family. It is characterized by the height of the ascenders and the descenders. Numerous ornamental variations complete medium and bold versions.

Figuratika with its cut out letters is a bold geometric Art Deco inspired stencil font with a retro 1920 1930 feeling. It was designed as a display font and is best for shorter texts, titles, logos, posters etc. Figuratika has multilingual support for most European languages.

Flighter is a bold sans-serif typeface, in a somewhat geometric and balanced style.  It has speed and stability and should bring the thoughts to a mid 20th century traveler.  Created by Måns Grebäck in 2017-2018, this high-quality font has support for hundreds of languages.

Palatine - this bold display typeface is a stylish and original, multipurpose font in a modern style with many alternatives, ligatures and swash that are very attractive, with their help you can make your project unique. And also use the main set to highlight exactly what you need.

Verbindig is a modern serif style typeface. With over 45 joining ligatures and 3 different Styles it's easy to make a unique logo, headline or poster in seconds. Regular, Bold & Extreme Multilingual support Numerals & Punctuation Fun fact: Verbindig means connection in swiss german - yes I'm from Switzerland

Topic - Dedicated to writing a Big text in newspapers, magazines, road boards, book , TV and other printing products, and web pages. The Topic font contains 4 styles (Light, regular, Medium and bold) The font includes a matching Latin design and support for Arabic, Persian, Kurdish, and Urdu.

Platoon was designed as a much needed alternative to other stencil fonts that don't provide enough weights. Comes in four weights, regular, medium, bold and black, which gives it enough flexibility to make it the stencil of choice for posters, titling, book covers, and military-related designs.

VolumeFour is a heavy, geometric sans-serif display face inspired by the custom lettering which adorns Black Sabbath's groundbreaking "Vol 4." Its bold forms and naturally tight spacing evoke the era which spawned such classics as "Snowblind" and "Supernaut", bringing this aesthetic to a contemporary audience.

I suggest you to pay attention to the "Design" font. It's bold, with softened corners and some slope for dynamic effect. "Design" font has a unique charm and easy visual readability, so it's perfect for headlines, whether for sports events, automotive posters, logo or monograms designs.

Bilbao is a hybrid between sans, slab and mono fonts with geometric details. This typeface is defined by multiple features, which give it a friendly feeling. Bilbao is perfect for branding and display purposes. The entire family consist of 18 styles with italics from Thin to Bold.

SF Kitab is An Arabic typeface for desktop applications. The font is dedicated for printing diverse books and publications. SF Kitab is clear and the reader feels comfortable reading long texts. It is contains two weights: normal and bold. This font supports Arabic, Persian and Urdu.