What intrigued me about Buslingthorpe was the virtuoso challenge it presented, of designing a typeface that would, despite a ridiculously tiny x-height, still possess a coherent harmony betwen upper and lower case, and read confortably. At the same time, beyond pure plastic formality, I was aware that there are strong connotations of historicism in this noble style, with overtones of regal magnificence, on account of the extravagant leading and generous point size required for adequate visibility—in traditional letterpress printing such proportions, with so few characters per square inch, were pricey and devoured resources. There are two iconic early 20th century designs in the genre: Koch Antiqua (Rudolf Koch, Klingspor Foundry, 1922) and Lucian (Lucian Bernhard, Bauer Foundry, 1925). Both these have x-heights smaller than fifty percent of ascender height, which nominally defines the category. So I made these my benchmarks, and determined to outdo them in dramatic fashion. —Nick Shinn, Orangeville, March 2021

Amory Script: a sweet, casual and dynamic handwritten fonts with dancing basics. Also available are Platypus Sans & Ornaments to help you mix and match them to suit your creative work in harmony. all to add an authentic touch to your design. Perfect for Branding, Logo, Greeting Cards, Wedding Stationery, Quotations etc. It comes with a set of Alternative OpenType Characters, Ligatures and various language support. To activate 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 newer versions. This is coded with Unicode PUA. Mac users can use Font Book and Windows users can use Character Maps to view and copy any of the additional characters to paste into your favorite text editor / application. Thank you very much for viewing, I really hope you enjoyed it and don’t hesitate to send me a message if you have problems or question

Father's Day, or June 17 of this year, is in the middle of Argentinian winter. And like people do on wintery Sunday mornings, I was bundled up in bed with too many covers, pillows and comforters. Feeling good and not thinking about anything in particular, Father's Day was nowhere in the vicinity of my mind. My eleven year old son, Matías, came into the room with a handmade present for me. Up to this point, my Father's Day gift history was nothing unusual. Books, socks, hand-painted wooden spoons, the kind of thing any father would expect from his pre-teen son. So you can understand when I say I was bracing myself to fake excitement at my son's present. But this Father's Day was special. I didn't have to fake excitement. I was in fact excited beyond my own belief. Matí's handmade present was a complete alphabet drawn on an A4 paper. Grungy, childish, and sweeter than a ton of honey. He'd spent days making it, three-dimensioning the letters, wiggle-shadowing them. Incredible. A common annoyance for graphic designers is explaining to people, even those close to them, what they do for a living. You have to somehow make it understandable that you are a visual communicator, not an artist. Part of the problem is the fact that "graphic designer" and "visual communicator" are just not in the dictionary of standard professions out there. If you're a plumber, you can wrap all the duties of your job with 3.5 words: I'm a plumber. If you're a graphic designer, no wrapper, 3.5 or 300 words, will ever cover it. I've spent many hours throughout the years explaining to my own family and friends what I do for a living, but most of them still come back and ask what it is exactly that I do for dough. When you're a type designer, that problem magnifies itself considerably. When someone asks you what you do for a living, you start looking for the nearest exit, but none of the ones you can find is any good. All the one-line descriptions are vague, and every single one of them queues a long, one-sided conversation that usually ends with someone getting too drunk listening, or too tired of talking. Now imagine being a type designer, with a curious eleven year old son. The kid is curious as to why daddy keeps writing huge letters on the computer screen. Let's go play some ball, dad. As soon as I finish working, son. He looks over my shoulder and sees a big twirly H on the screen. To him it looks like a game, like I'm not working. And I have to explain it to him again. This Father's Day, my son gave me the one present that tells me he finally understands what I do for a living. Perhaps he is even comfortable with it, or curious enough about that he wants to try it out himself. Either way, it was the happiest Father's Day I've ever had, and I'm prouder of my son than of everything else I've done in my life. This is Matí's font. I hope you find it useful.

handwritten decorative variable font A few fonts already exist which have been drawn in accordance with the exact same principles. But these are just drawn - only drawn. The ANATOLE FRANCE retains the hand script character in spite of its stringent composition. An old portfolio of script patterns from the 1920s or 1930s, which appeared in the Georg D. W. Callwey Publishing House in Munich, includes among its pages one with a handwritten poster script, as was very typical for the 1920s. To begin with, there is the emphasized decorative character, which stands out due to stressing the stems. Next, the attempt to portray the character forms with the help of a few but always recurring basic elements is driven to the limits. Theoretically speaking, that which should have led to a contrived, geometrically determined type, obtains a likeable and pleasant look through the ductus of the manually guided brush. The classic version of ANATOLE FRANCE includes 5 fonts: Light, SemiLight, Normal, SemiBold, Bold. The variable font allows seamless font weights from 300 (Light) to 700 (Bold). Alternate letterforms are available through the appropriate OpenType features: style set 1 (O Q V) style set 2 (v w)

Brown Amsonia is a lovely script font of which letters are in handwriting to express unique, personal nuances in your designs. Such a handwriting font is available in high contrasts having noticeable differences between the bright and the dark letter parts to produce clear, firm displays making the designs look professional and modern. Besides, Brown Amsonia can express personal, artistic displays to create more interesting, noticeable designs. The letters are interconnected and their details show sharp, curvy scratches on the edges. Due to the complex font style details, this font is better to apply for big text sizes. In addition, you may enjoy the available features here. Features: Ligatures Stylistic Sets Multilingual Supports PUA Encoded Numerals and Punctuations Brown Amsonia fits best for various design projects, such as brandings, invitations, greeting cards, name cards, quotes, printed products, merchandise, social media, etc. Find out more ways to use this font by taking a look at the font preview. Thanks for purchasing our fonts. Hopefully, you have a great time using our font. Feel free to contact us anytime for further information or when you have trouble with the font. Thanks a lot and happy designing.

HWT Etta is a fun display typeface that has two styles: East and West! Its two variations ensure you have maximum wood type swagger in every display size that you might want. This fresh design takes a cue from the wild design experimentation that was happening in the heyday of mid 19th Century wood type—but filtered through 1960s photo-type sensibilities and served up for today’s design needs. Etta West is a decorative inline style and the Etta East is a whimsical reverse contrast style. They live together harmoniously, with their own specific flavors. Practically speaking, both styles are intended for display use, so use them big and use them proudly! Set your XXL size titles in West and your L to XL size types in East. As different as they might look at first, both fonts share a common DNA—Don’t be shy about using them together. The HWT Etta font is part of the Hamilton Wood Type and Printing Museum’s Type Legacy Project. In keeping with the project, Etta is named after Etta Shove Hamilton, who was J.E. Hamilton’s wife and the company’s first bookkeeper.

EXPRESO was inspired by the extinct art and craft of urban Lettering applied to buses and other kind of cars for public service of transportation. Since the mid of last century, main cities of Colombia - as Bogotá, Medellín and others - were growing in population and brought urban area expansion with it and serious traffic problems due to the lack of political will and urban planning. The problem of urban transport in Colombia's largest cities has not yet been resolved, despite adopting some examples of mass transit system in other cities in the region. Before these actions, public transport in cities such as Bogotá was quite varied, leaving space for popular culture that survived for a couple of decades, until the massive dieback of these old buses early this decade, either by practices associated with Lettering it was displaced by some technological, some expressions of art street and city that evolved or disappeared. EXPRESO can be used mainly in titles and display texts. You have a multitude of options using combination of layers from the basics of the font family to the various textures and shades. Supports East Europe languages.

Quartal is a family of stylish sans serif typefaces of condensed proportions. The family consists of 5 regular weights, 4 condensed ones and 13 extended styles (7 upright and 6 italic). At first there was intention to release just 4 condensed weights for headlines and advertising texts, but later 5 styles of wider proportions were added. As the result the area of applications becomes much wider due to possibility to use the font for smaller point sizes. The name "Quartal", which in this case means city quarter, according to author's associations emphasizes the advertising nature of the design most suitable to the urban environment. Character set of the fonts covers alphabets of Western Europe and basic Cyrillic languages. In addition, it includes a range of alternatives, especially in Cyrillic part. Design was done by Oleg Karpinsky. Released by ParaType in 2010. In 2011 13 new styles of extended proportions were added to Quartal family by the same author. 7 new weights and 6 corresponding italics make Quartal useful for setting not very long texts in advertising and display matter, and for magazines as well.

Thermal is an exploration of balance and contrast. Combining the elegance of classical typography with the sharpness of contemporary design. It was conceived to be a variable font with two axes: weight & optical size, providing a wide range of options for texts & display applications. The regular and italic text weights breathe a warm atmosphere, their design inspiration is a relaxed interpretation of the work of 16th-century French type designer Robert Granjon, evoking a comforting rhythm and a sense of familiarity that makes reading enjoyable. On the other end of Thermal's design spectrum lie the extreme weights – thin and heavy –, specifically designed for larger sizes. These weights borrow stylistic cues from several distinct influences: the characteristic woodtype from the 19th century, the sharp lettering styles from the 70s, and the bold work of Oscar Ogg. One of Thermal's disctint features is its italic's 20° inclination, an significant inclination by all standards, this design choice finds its roots in the "Ascendonica Cursive" of 1571, but is a contemporary interpretation that generates a captivating contrast with the regular version. Thermal studies the past and analyzes the present to create a unique blend, bringing a dictint dichotomic identity.

Pulse JP is a constructivist text and display font that differs from comparable fonts due to its special sharpness and harmonious balance. Its technical and constructed form creates a somewhat artificial impression of special appeal. It is ideal for display on the screen and is used in many projects. Pulse JP is a super family consisting of 48 weights from compressed to expanded in 6 fat gradations each. This opens up a wide range of designs and the possibility of combining typefaces of the same character in a wide variety of variants, or of being able to adapt typefaces to very different conditions. The details of the individual typefaces are coordinated with each other with great precision and perfectly implemented in terms of craftsmanship. In all variants, this leads to a well-balanced typeface with particular sharpness. The very extensive character set supports 120 Latin languages. Pulse JP meets the pulse of the times, which is in a transition away from the humanistic to the classicistic designs. jp Pulse outperforms many other fonts not only in terms of sharpness but also in terms of variety and is therefore always a good choice.

PF Mellon is a modernist variable grotesque with mixed roots. Its unconventional aesthetic is the product of an exploration into the art of emphasizing titles, headlines and text in captivating and unpredictable ways. Contrary to conventional practices of highlighting text with heavier weights, PF Mellon proposes an intriguing new scheme based on striking and attention-grabbing compositions of narrow and extended letterforms- even when set in lowercase. Part geometric and part grotesque, PF Mellon’s expressionist alphabet and extravagant style challenge conventions of visual culture in an Art Deco-like manner. PF Mellon’s rebellious idiosyncrasy takes its cues from the eccentric personality of our popular PF Venue, an earlier geometric sans serif characterized by its daring combinations of non-uniform structures. PF Mellon’s basic design skeleton was influenced by nineteenth and early twentieth century condensed sans serif typefaces such as Stephenson Blake's Grotesque No.77 and ATF’s Alternate Gothic, adding an extra contrast to the thickness of strokes. PF Mellon is also available as a variable font format which you may request it free of charge from Parachute® once you purchase the whole type family.

Finding the right fonts for your projects is a challenge because improper fonts will deliver improper messages resulting in unprofessional appearances. Therefore, Trafit is here as your problem solver. This is Trafit, a perfect font to show luxury, class, and eternity. Trafit is an outstandingly designed stylish serif font. Its soft, clean lines and indentations show elegant impressions for your prominent designs. Its letter edges have hooks like the other serif fonts. The simple shapes and even sizes help to make it legible. Due to the great legibility, this font is applicable for any text sizes and length. In addition, you can enjoy the features available here. Features: Ligatures Multilingual Supports PUA Encoded Numerals and Punctuations Trafit fits best for various design projects, such as brandings, posters, banners, greeting cards, magazine covers, quotes, printed products, merchandise, social media, etc. Find out more ways to use this font by taking a look at the font preview. Thanks for purchasing our fonts. Hopefully, you have a great time using our font. Feel free to contact us anytime for further information or when you have trouble with the font. Thanks a lot and happy designing.

Large font sizes are often hard for the eyes to see and difficult to read. As a consequence, you have to give a lot of extra effort just to find out the right, legible font type with a great weight for your brand. Restages is a capitalized display serif font with less thickness for an effortless readability. This font type is perfect for formal contents because of its stylish, elegant characters to strengthen the impressions delivered. Furthermore, this font is truly legible due to its simple, regular serif forms to ease readers to recognize each letter correctly. Make use of the font features available here. Features: Stylistic Sets Multilingual Supports PUA Encoded Numerals and Punctuations Restages fits best for various design projects, such as brandings, posters, banners, logos, magazine covers, quotes, headings, printed products, invitations, name cards, merchandise, social media, etc. Find out more ways to use this font by taking a look at the font preview. Thanks for purchasing our fonts. Hopefully, you have a great time using our font. Feel free to contact us anytime for further information or when you have trouble with the font. Thanks a lot and happy designing.

It is a tough task to create a visual identity without using a characteristic, multipurpose font to represent your brand in order to look different, yet unexaggerating. For that reason, let us welcome Tailpen, the perfect balance of simplicity, charm, and boldness to live up your brand identity. Tailpen is a display font in simple, inclined square letter shapes to show charming, real, attractive nuances. It is greatly legible due to the simple shapes in high contrasts with which you can apply this font for various text sizes. It also gives you a clipart as a bonus and you can make use of the available features here as well. Features: Multilingual Supports PUA Encoded Numerals and Punctuations Tailpen fits best for various design projects, such as brandings, posters, banners, headings, magazine covers, quotes, printed products, merchandise, social media, etc. Find out more ways to use this font by taking a look at the font preview. Thanks for purchasing our fonts. Hopefully, you have a great time using our font. Feel free to contact us anytime for further information or when you have trouble with the font. Thanks a lot and happy designing.

PTx Flowers Font Family 2 fonts: regular and silhouette each font - 6 glyphs TTF format Bear in mind that each glyph of the font PTx Flowers Regular is close to the maximum limit of points possible in ttf, which means that despite being tested in several programs, illustrator, photoshop, among others including word, some bugs may occur, depending on the rendering capability of the program you are working on. I found however that most of the time, that by the way the bugs, when tested, were only verified in word, that changing the size of the letter/glyph or even the zoom of the document, the letter/glyph was rendered correctly. These fonts have a very limited number of glyphs because, due to the glyphs having too many points, it can take some time to render. This will depend on the capacity of the machine's graphics card (computer, tablet, mobile phone). Hence a low number to take as little time as possible. See at work in word: https://youtu.be/PIMBlja2I5k See ar work in illustrator: https://youtu.be/RJp9X9TQ4so See at work in photoshop: https://youtu.be/yvrBmCJ80pc

Ravensara Sans — fashionable, high-contrast humanist sans. Ravensara family was born from the idea of taking the concept of Didone to weight extremes. Ravensara Sans is available in 7 weights, including Thin, Light, Regular, Medium, SemiBold, Bold and Black. Depending on weight, Ravensara Sans, like the other members of this font family, show quite different behavior. Heavy weights function above all as display fonts and work particularly great in all-caps. Medium weights of Ravensara Sans represent humanist grotesque, descended from the pages of fashion magazines. Thin weight perfectly complements the others if you need an especially wide choice of weights. Also, all the weights work great in all-caps. Ravensara Sans is a part of the Ravensara superfamily, united by the same anatomy, which currently also includes Ravensara Serif and Ravensara Stencil. If you need to achieve classic Haute Couture look — Ravensara Sans is a great choice. It’s a perfect choice for fashion logos, headlines, short texts, magazines, due to its simplicity looks great in oversize typography, branding, identity, website design, album art, covers, posters, advertising, etc. Ravensara Sans extends multilingual support to Basic Latin, Western European, Euro, Catalan, Baltic, Turkish, Central European, Pan African Latin and Afrikaans.

The font Arsena was designed for a contest on the creation of modern Ukrainian business font "Arsenal" and awarded the 3rd prize. A little squared figure which is enlightened from the middle, unobvious, but the existing modular grid, simplified, but not a primitive design of letters, mathematically defined optimum inclination angle, counterbalanced ratio of thickness, an optimum spacing and a manual kerning - all of this is for the best reproduction in any conditions as well as for the maximum clarity and readability. Asymmetric slab serifs make the font Ukrainian and at the same time have a modern and dynamic look. Besides its highlighting function, Italics also have an independent assignment. The Italics are made under calligraphic traditions in a modern style of mono-thickness (but optically compensated) and in particular, in combination with alternative initials of the same style and it is relevant to use it in a private letter, or in the design of the official greetings, etc. It is also promoted by four typographic ornamental motives. Due to the above-mentioned qualities this font can be used successfully for a wide range of tasks - from business to mass media, publishing, advertising and accidental.

Do you want something prominent yet legible? This is Long Vacation, our new handwritten font, ideal for all of your design needs. Long Vacation is a visually interesting handwritten font showing a unique handwriting style giving the natural, lovely nuances on your designs. The flowing letters are interconnected and the scratches that connect the letters make the font look more natural. Details on each letter and curves on the edges show high contrasts. Due to its great legibility, you can apply this font to both big and small text sizes. Additionally, enjoy the features available here. Features: Stylistic Sets Multilingual Supports PUA Encoded Numerals and Punctuations Long Vacation fits best for various design projects, such as brandings, posters, banners, invitations, greeting cards, magazine covers, quotes, printed products, merchandise, logos, social media, etc. Find out more ways to use this font by taking a look at the font preview. Thanks for purchasing our fonts. Hopefully, you have a great time using our font. Feel free to contact us anytime for further information or when you have trouble with the font. Thanks a lot and happy designing.

Benchmark Pro is a carefully structured geometric typeface which works amazingly well in body text due to its simplistic nature and large x-height. The design of Benchmark Pro started out as an attempt to convert the minimalistic structure of a technical and purely geometric design into a readable modern and friendly sans serif. This was achieved by selectively changing and turning the straight lines of the initial drawings into curves and applying legibility techniques to the transformed letterforms. These letterforms have a distinct personality which is bolstered by its angular curves and open counter terminals. The result is a contemporary text typeface that looks quite fashionable. Benchmark Pro gets away from the ultra modern and mechanical structure but keeps its display nature, it gets away from the classical but still remains legible. This robust san serif type family offers an extended character set which supports simultaneously Latin, Cyrillic and Greek. All Benchmark Pro font variants have a companion italic, rounding the total family members at 14 fonts. Each font includes more than 750 glyphs and is powered with 17 opentype features. PDF Specimen Benchmark on Behance

In the collection of vintage and historic images available online from the Library of Congress is one of the exterior of the Town Talk Diner in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Regrettably, on May 28, 2020, the Town Talk Diner was damaged by vandalism, and subsequently destroyed by a fire that engulfed the building early on the morning of May 29th due to civil unrest following the death of George Floyd. The restaurant first opened in 1946, closed in 2011 and subsequently re-opened under new ownership in 2014 with French cuisine, then from 2016 until its demise as an American bistro. While this was not known at the time of selecting the image for a typographic model, subsequent research on the diner turned up these facts. The large vintage sign above the entrance was in big, bold Art Deco letters with rows and rows of bulbs for illuminating the name at night. Coffee and Danish JNL, modeled from the image of that sign, is available in both regular and oblique versions. Perhaps, in a way, the type design will serve as a bit of historic recognition for a popular eating spot.

Montague Script takes its name from a small hilltown of western Massachusetts rich in culture and history. I lived in this beloved community for a number of years and it’s where I first began my study of calligraphy and lettering. While most brush scripts take their cue from mid-twentieth century samples, Montague Script is a fresh, contemporary alternative. It comes directly from lettering written with a #3 sable brush on smooth vellum and is digitized with the same sensibility a lettering artist writes with. Montague reflects a dynamic interplay between form and rhythm not usually associated with type. Words suggest a baseline, yet are not bound by it. Beginnings, endings, alternates and ligatures come in as needed while you type. Many more alternates are available in the glyph palette of most current graphic software. Exuberant swash versions of upper and lowercase letters, as well as ligatures can be accessed through both the type and glyph palettes. Montague Script is a natural for advertising, point of purchase displays, packaging and logo design, cards, invitations, journals and much more. You will be delighted at how well it can dress up a project and how easily it sets.

The idea behind designing ‘Matwin’ font was related to the youngest children of the designer namely the M-A fraternal twin. The name of the typeface (i.e., Matwin or M-A-Twin) was composed by merging three linguistic small syllables. The ‘-Twin’ syllable refers to the non-identical twin of the designer. The ‘M-’ and ‘A-’ syllables refer to the initial letters of the twin’s first names (i.e., Muhammad and Abdul-Wli) respectively. The typeface ‘Matwin’ has a personal trait which makes it as one of the most favorite fonts for the designer among his humble collection of fonts. Modestly, it is the designer’s handwriting and it has been designed to be added to the script font family known as brush un-joined. The brief process for having this typeface alive was done by firstly scanning the real script for each Latin letter, digit, symbol which were handwritten earlier by the designer himself. Then, the combination of these many scanned characters was manipulated using digital programs to produce at the end the complete typeface. The typeface has the essential glyphs comprising the character set required for most of the Latin, Western, and Eastern European languages including the Irish language. It combines +605 characters and this makes it as a pro font. It also entitles it to be applicable for usage in many languages of different communities and nations worldwide. ‘Matwin’ is dedicated for those who search for a genuine handwriting typeface with a natural touch and informal style to be added on their different published and produced products and services. It is more preferable when it is used in artistic, typographic, and other works using the lowercase letters or by mixing both upper- and lower-case letters. Moreover, the typeface is appropriate for any type of typographic and graphic designs in web, print, and other media such as boards and walls. It is also preferable to be used in the wide fields related to publications especially children-related ones, comics, printed or handwritten menus of cafeterias and restaurants at universities and public places, as well as other prints related to services and production industries. It also can create a very personal and friendly impact when used in headlines, books and novels’ covers, posters, titles, messages, envelopes addresses, grocery lists, postcards, ads, fliers, journals, paper arts, public notices, invitations, scrapbooks, notations, products’ surfaces for organic foods and juices, logos, medical packages related to children, Android applications, as well as products and corporates branding and the like. In a nutshell, ‘Matwin’ typeface fits without a glitch those (i.e., designers, typographers, publishers, artists, packagers, service providers, and so on) who have drastic and strong tendency towards imprinting their works with spontaneous and outlandish touches made by this typeface. Please, enjoy it extremely.

Hey there, cats and kittens. Have you heard the news about the grooviest typeface in town? That’s right, I’m talkin’ about Sinzano—the typeface that’s cool, collected, and interlocking! Now, you might be asking yourself, “What’s so special about Sinzano?” Well, let me tell you, this typeface is a real wild one. It’s got some serious style, with letterforms that interlock like a bunch of jazz cats jammin’ on stage. And don’t even get me started on the ligatures—they’re fascinating, man! Sinzano comes in three different styles, so you can choose the one that’s right for you. Sinzano Regular is a slender, slightly flared headliner, perfect for making a statement. Sinzano Sans is a similar concept, but with straight, flat ends, for a more modern vibe. And if you’re looking for something a little more modest, Sinzano Display is a companion typeface that’s broader and rounder, with just a touch of interlocking. So, if you’re ready to add some serious style to your designs, head on over to Sinzano, baby! This typeface is the real deal, and it’s gonna knock your socks off. Most Latin-based European writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aromanian, Aymara, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kurdish (Latin), Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Moldovan, Montenegrin, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Ossetian (Latin), Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Sami, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wolof, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec Zulu and Zuni.

Burgues Script is an ode to the late 19th century American calligrapher Louis Madarasz, whose legendary pen has inspired schools of penmanship for over 100 years. His talent has caused some people to call him “the most skillful penman the world has ever known.” I use the word ‘ode’ in a colloquially ambitious manner. If I was an actual poet, my words would be about things I desire but cannot attain, objects of utter beauty that make me wallow in humility, or people of enormous talent who look down at me from the clouds of genius. But I don’t write poems. My work consists of letters drawn to fit together, that become an element of someone’s visual poetry. I am the poet’s assistant, so to speak. Once in a while, the assistant persists on what the subject of the poem will be. And occasionally, the poet gives in to the persistence. I hope you, visual poet, find my persistence justified in this case. The two main sources for Burgues were the calligraphy examples shown in Zaner Bloser’s The Secret of the Skill of Madarasz: His Philosophy and Penmanship Masterpieces, and C. W. Jones’s Lessons in Advanced Engraver’s Script Penmanship by L. Madarasz. These two references were the cornerstone for the concept I was trying to work with. I did have to change many of the letters in order to be able to produce digital calligraphy that can flow flexibly and offered the user a variety of options, while maintaining its attractive appearance. To this end, many ligatures and swashes were made, as well as full flourished sets of letters for use at the beginnings or endings of words and sentences. All of this has been tied together with OpenType and tested thoroughly within today’s standard design and desktop publishing software. After working with digital scripts for so long, at one point I thought that Burgues Script would become a bit of a chore to complete. I also thought that, like with most other scripts, the process would regularize itself after a while and be reduced to a mechanical habit. Surprisingly, and fortunately for me, this did not happen. The past holds as many surprises as the future. Madarasz’s method of penmanship was fascinating and challenging to translate into the strict, mathematically oriented language of the computer. It seems that the extremely high contrast of the forms, coupled with the required flow and connectivity of such lettering, will always be hard work for any visual artist to produce, even with the aide of a powerful machine. I can only imagine what steady nerves and discipline Madarasz must have had to be able to produce fully flourished and sublimely connected words and sentences on a whim. When I think of Madarasz producing a flourished calligraphic logotype in a few seconds, and try to reconcile that with the timelines of my or my colleagues’ work in identity and packaging design, the mind reels. Such blinding talent from over a hundred years ago. Burgues is the Spanish word for Bourgeois. In the end, I hope Burgues Script will serve you well when a flourished word or sentence is required for a design project. One of the wonders of the computer age is the ability to visually conjure up the past, serving both the present and the future. With Burgues, you have a piece of “the most skillful penman the world has ever known,” at your service. Burgues received important awards such as a Certificate of Excellence TDC2 2008 and a Certificate of Excellence at the Bienal Tipos Latinos 2008.

Over the past couple of years I received quite a number of unusual and surprising requests to modify my type designs to suit projects of personal nature, but none top the ones that asked me to typeset and modify tattoos using Burgues Script or Adios. At first the whole idea was amusing to me, kind of like an inside joke. I had worked in corporate branding for a few years before becoming a type designer, and suddenly I was being asked to get involved in personal branding, as literally “personal” and “branding” as the expression can get. After a few such requests I began pondering the whole thing from a professional perspective. It was typography, after all, no matter how unusual the method or medium. A very personal kind of typography, too. The messages being typeset were commemorating friends, family, births, deaths, loves, principles, and things that influenced people in a deep and direct way, so much so that they chose to etch that influence on their bodies and wear it forever. And when you decide to wear something forever, style is of the essence. After digging into the tattooing scene, I have a whole new respect for tattoo artists. Wielding that machine is not easy, and driving pigment into people’s skin is an enormous responsibility. Not to mention that they're some of the very few who still use a crafty, hands-on process that is all but obsolete in other ornamentation methods. Some artists go the extra mile and take the time to develop their own lettering for tattooing purposes, and some are inventive enough to create letters based on the tattoo’s concept. But they are not the norm. Generally speaking, most tattoo artists use generic type designs to typeset words. Even the popular blackletter designs have become quite generic over the past few decades. I still cringe when I see something like Bank Script embedded into people’s skin, turning them into breathing, walking shareholder invitations or government bonds. There’s been quite a few attempts at making fonts out of whatever original tattoo designer typefaces can be found out there - wavy pseudo-comical letters, or rough thick brush scripts, but as far as I could tell a stylish skin script was never attempted in the digital age. And that’s why I decided to design Piel Script. Piel is Spanish for skin. In a way, Piel Script is a removed cousin of Burgues Script. Although the initial sketches were infused with some 1930s showcard lettering ideas (particularly those of B. Boley, whose amazing work was shown in Sign of the Times magazine), most of the important decisions about letter shapes and connectivity were reached by observing whatever strengths and weaknesses can be seen in tattoos using Burgues. Tattoos using Adios also provided some minor input. In retrospect, I suppose Affair exercised some influence as well, albeit in a minor way. I guess what I'm trying to say is there is as much of me in Piel Script as there is in any of the other major scripts I designed, even though the driving vision for it is entirely different from anything else I have ever done. I hope you like Piel Script. If you decide it to use it on your skin, I'll be very flattered. If you decide to use it on your skateboard or book cover, I'll be just as happy. Scripts can't get any more personal than this. Piel Script received the Letter2 award, where they selected the best 53 typefaces of the last decade, organised by ATypI.