Always intrigued by Bodoni's original work, I was set out—back in 2000—to examine his work and study Manuale Tipografico, one of the greatest specimen books ever printed. Issued in 1818 at Parma, Italy by Bodoni's widow, the two-volume work shows an impressive array of 142 roman alphabets and some foreign ones such as Greek and Cyrillic. After a careful examination of all characters, I decided to create a typeface based on the distinct script capitals presented in the book. Matching lowercase italics were later selected and designed to complete the series. Since my intention was not to create simply a digital version of Bodoni's work, this typeface was designed with connected characters and capitals with extra calligraphic elements. The result was released in 2002 and published in our award-winning catalog/book IDEA/Trendsetting Typography vol.1. Later in 2005 we revived a large number of ornaments and borders (credit goes to designer George Lygas). All this work was left behind till recently when it was revisited to create a complete 'Pro' family. Several new uppercase and lowercase glyphs were designed in order to create a distinct typeface, which is based on Bodoni but yet it stands out on its own. The new version also takes care of conflicts between neigbouring letters, something that was not included in the first version. Bodoni Script Pro is a 3-weight superfamily. It supports 10 special opentype features including 'contextual alternates' as well as support for both Latin and Greek. Each font comes with 725 glyphs including a large number of alternates as well as 144 ornaments. Furthermore, when you purchase the whole package you get a bonus font which contains 120 frame parts. These parts, when put together, create some truly amazing borders. -Panos Vassiliou

It's time to kick off your shoes and feel the "sans" between your toes. Like Cabrito Inverto , its stress-reversing cousin, the new Cabrito Sans serves up something nice and cool in the heat of the project. A quick recap: the original Cabrito is an insigne Design slab serif produced for the kid's book The Clothes Letters Wear. It's been pretty well-received--even more than I expected. I promised to grow the family with a free-standing inverted style that could pair well with Cabrito. (See Cabrito Inverto.) Now, I'm rounding out the family with this well-crafted sans. And so now, Sans is where it's at. Strip away the serifs of Cabrito, and you have a laid back, rounded sans serif alternative served up over easy. This handwriting-inspired creation--like its relatives--is definitely not uptight about its forms (though not afraid to show them off a little). Cabrito Sans' whole pack of alternates is accessible in any OpenType-enabled program. This kiddo consists of a workforce of alternates, swashes, and alternate titling caps to give the font a little extra sweetener to its flavor. Also bundled are swash alternates, old style figures, and compact caps. Check out the interactive PDF brochure to test out each these options. This font family members also consists of the glyphs for 72 various languages. Cabrito Inverto and Cabrito do pair nicely with Cabrito Sans (in case you doubted). Use Sans--or all three of these amigos--to express friendliness on just about anything: food, candy, toys, cars (if you're feeling bold). Don't wait, though. Purchase Cabrito Sans today, and bring a one-of-a-kind look to whatever your computer's next design party is.

The building of the Northern Bank of St. Petersburg's Baku branch was built in 1903-1905. It was the first Art Nouveau-style building in Baku, Azerbaijan. Later the bank was transformed into the Russian-Asian Bank. After the oil boom in Baku in the 19th century, branches of many banks and new banks were opened in the city. The branch of the Northern Bank of St. Petersburg was among the first banks that was opened in Baku. N.Bayev was the architect of the building for the branch of the Northern Bank of St. Petersburg located at Gorchakovskaya 3 in 1903-1905. The building currently houses the Central Branch of the International Bank of Azerbaijan. My purpose in writing this is not to copy and paste the information from Wikipedia. What attracted me to the building was the word "Банкъ" (Bank) written in Cyrillic letters, which was also used in Azerbaijan during the Soviet era. The exact date of the writing is not known. Every time I pass by this building, I always thought of creating a font of this writing someday. I had taken a photo of the building and saved it on my phone. I did a lot of research on the font and asked a lot of people. However, some did not provide information at all and some said they did not have any information. I was interested in the history of this font but I do not know if this font really existed or it was created by the architect out of nowhere. If there was such a history of this font, I wanted to recreate this font and make it available. If not, I had to create it from scratch in the same way, using only existing letters on the building. Finally, I made up my mind and decided to develop the font with all letters I have got. It was difficult to create a font based on the word, Банкъ. Because in the appearance of the letters, the midline of the letters on A, H, K was very distinct, both in the form of inclination and in more precise degrees. The serif part of the letters, the height of the upper and lower sides, differed from each other. I don't know whether it was done this way when the building was constructed or it happened over time. I prepared and kept the initial version of the font. I took a break for a while. I started digging on the story of the font again. Meanwhile, I was researching and got inspired by similar fonts. Unfortunately, my research on the font's history did not yield any results. I decided to continue finishing up the font. After developing the demo, I created the font by keeping certain parts of these differences in the letters. In addition, I had to consider the development of letters in the Cyrillic, as well as the Latin alphabet, over the past period. Thus, I began to look at the appearance of slab-serif or serif fonts of that time. In general, as I gain more experience in developing fonts, I try to focus on the precision of the design for each font. In recent years, I specifically paid attention to this matter. YouTube channel and articles by Alexandra K.'s of ParaType, as well as, information and samples from TypeType and Fontfabric studios on the Cyrillic alphabet were quite useful. I gathered data regarding the Latin alphabet from various credible sources. I do not know if I could accomplish what I aimed at but I know one thing that I could develop the font. Maybe someday I'll have to revise this font. For now, I share it with you. I created the font in 10 styles. 7 weight from Thin to Extra Black, an Outline, Shadow, and Art Nouveau. The Art Nouveau style was inspired by the texture in the background used for the text on the building. The texture I applied to capital letters adds beauty to the font. If you like the font feel free to use it or simply let me know if your current alphabet doesn't support this font.

TA Bankslab graphic presentation at Behance The building of the Northern Bank of St. Petersburg's Baku branch was built in 1903-1905. It was the first Art Nouveau-style building in Baku, Azerbaijan. Later the bank was transformed into the Russian-Asian Bank. After the oil boom in Baku in the 19th century, branches of many banks and new banks were opened in the city. The branch of the Northern Bank of St. Petersburg was among the first banks that was opened in Baku. N.Bayev was the architect of the building for the branch of the Northern Bank of St. Petersburg located at Gorchakovskaya 3 in 1903-1905. The building currently houses the Central Branch of the International Bank of Azerbaijan. My purpose in writing this is not to copy and paste the information from Wikipedia. What attracted me to the building was the word "Банкъ" (Bank) written in Cyrillic letters, which was also used in Azerbaijan during the Soviet era. The exact date of the writing is not known. Every time I pass by this building, I always thought of creating a font of this writing someday. I had taken a photo of the building and saved it on my phone. I did a lot of research on the font and asked a lot of people. However, some did not provide information at all and some said they did not have any information. I was interested in the history of this font but I do not know if this font really existed or it was created by the architect out of nowhere. If there was such a history of this font, I wanted to recreate this font and make it available. If not, I had to create it from scratch in the same way, using only existing letters on the building. Finally, I made up my mind and decided to develop the font with all letters I have got. It was difficult to create a font based on the word, Банкъ. Because in the appearance of the letters, the midline of the letters on A, H, K was very distinct, both in the form of inclination and in more precise degrees. The serif part of the letters, the height of the upper and lower sides, differed from each other. I don't know whether it was done this way when the building was constructed or it happened over time. I prepared and kept the initial version of the font. I took a break for a while. I started digging on the story of the font again. Meanwhile, I was researching and got inspired by similar fonts. Unfortunately, my research on the font's history did not yield any results. I decided to continue finishing up the font. After developing the demo, I created the font by keeping certain parts of these differences in the letters. In addition, I had to consider the development of letters in the Cyrillic, as well as the Latin alphabet, over the past period. Thus, I began to look at the appearance of slab-serif or serif fonts of that time. In general, as I gain more experience in developing fonts, I try to focus on the precision of the design for each font. In recent years, I specifically paid attention to this matter. YouTube channel and articles by Alexandra K.'s of ParaType, as well as, information and samples from TypeType and Fontfabric studios on the Cyrillic alphabet were quite useful. I gathered data regarding the Latin alphabet from various credible sources. I do not know if I could accomplish what I aimed at but I know one thing that I could develop the font. Maybe someday I'll have to revise this font. For now, I share it with you. I created the font in 10 styles. 7 weight from Thin to Extra Black, an Outline, Shadow, and Art Nouveau. The Art Nouveau style was inspired by the texture in the background used for the text on the building. The texture I applied to capital letters adds beauty to the font. If you like the font feel free to use it or simply let me know if your current alphabet doesn't support this font.

“Hand Sketch Rough Pos­ter” is a hand­made, rough and dirty sans-serif dis­play font for deco­ra­tive head­line sizes. Hand drawn. A–Z (× 2), a–z (× 2) and 0–9 (× 4) are each many dif­fe­rent forms. Con­text­ual alter­na­tes. Is inten­ded to show the hand-made cha­rac­ter and the vibrancy of the dis­play font. The dif­fe­rent forms of rough­ness crea­tes a live­li­ness in the typeface. Stan­dard liga­tures like ae, oe, AE, OE, ff, fl, fi, fj, ffl, ffi, ffj and more deco­ra­tive liga­tures like CT, LC, LE, LH, LI, LO, LU, LY, TOO, TC, TE, TH, TU, TZ and ch, cl, ck, ct, sh, sk, st, sp, addi­tio­nal logo­ty­pes like BPM, fff, ppp, sfz and many more … plus Ver­sal Eszett (Capi­tal Let­ter Dou­ble S) give the font more life and shows that des­pite their retro-looks works with modern Open­Type tech­no­logy (type the word note for the sym­bol ♫ and the word love for the ding­bat ❤ … ). Sym­bols like play, stop, eject, for­ward, back­ward, skip, pause and so on. The topic for the dis­cre­tio­nary liga­tures and the sym­bols are music. Have fun with this font – turn up the volume! How To Use – awe­some magic OpenType-Features in your lay­out application ■ In Adobe Pho­to­shop and Adobe InDe­sign, font fea­ture con­trols are wit­hin the Cha­rac­ter panel sub-menu → Open­Type → Dis­cre­tio­nary Liga­tures … Che­cked fea­tures are applied/on. Unche­cked fea­tures are off. ■ In Adobe Illus­tra­tor, font fea­ture con­trols are wit­hin the Open­Type panel. Icons at the bot­tom of the panel are but­ton con­trols. Dar­ker ‘pres­sed’ but­tons are applied/on. ■ Addi­tio­nally in Adobe InDe­sign and Adobe Illus­tra­tor, alter­nate gly­phs can manu­ally be ins­er­ted into a text frame by using the gly­phs panel. The panel can be opened by selec­ting Win­dow from the menu bar → Type → Gly­phs. Or use sign-overview of your ope­ra­ting sys­tem. ■ For a over­view of OpenType-Feature com­pa­ti­bi­lity for com­mon app­li­ca­ti­ons, fol­low the myfonts-help http://www.myfonts.com/help/#looks-different ■ It may pro­cess a little bit slowly in some app­li­ca­ti­ons, because the font has a lot of lovely rough details (anchor points). TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS ■ Font Name: Hand Sketch Rough Pos­ter ■ Font Weights: Regu­lar ■ Fonts Cate­gory: Dis­play for Head­line Size ■ Desktop-Font For­mat: OTF (Open­Type Font for Mac + Win) + TTF (True­Type Font) ■ Web-Font For­mat: SVG + EOT + TTF + WOF ■ Font License: Desk­top license, Web license, App license, eBook license, Ser­ver license ■ Glyph cover­age: 715 ■ Lan­guage Sup­port: Afri­kaans, Alba­nian, Alsa­tian, Ara­go­nese, Ara­paho, Aro­ma­nian, Arr­ernte, Astu­rian, Aymara, Bas­que, Bela­rusian (Lac­inka), Bis­lama, Bos­nian, Bre­ton, Cata­lan, Cebuano, Cha­morro, Che­yenne, Chi­chewa (Nyanja), Cim­brian, Cor­si­can, Croa­tian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Espe­ranto, Esto­nian, Fijian, Fin­nish, French, French Creole (Saint Lucia), Fri­sian, Fri­ulian, Gali­cian, Genoese, Ger­man, Gil­ber­tese (Kiri­bati), Green­lan­dic, Hai­tian Creole, Hawaiian, Hili­gaynon, Hmong, Hopi, Hun­ga­rian, Iba­nag, Iloko (Ilo­kano), Indo­ne­sian, Inter­g­lossa (Glosa), Inter­lin­gua, Irish (Gae­lic), Istro-Romanian, Ita­lian, Jèr­riais, Kas­hubian, Kur­dish (Kur­manji), Ladin, Lat­vian, Lithua­nian, Loj­ban, Lom­bard, Low Saxon, Luxem­bour­gian, Malag­asy, Malay (Lati­ni­zed), Mal­tese, Manx, Maori, Megleno-Romanian, Mohawk, Nahuatl, Norfolk/Pitcairnese, Nort­hern Sotho (Pedi), Nor­we­gian, Occi­tan, Oromo, Pan­gasinan, Papia­mento, Pied­mon­tese, Polish, Por­tu­guese, Pota­wa­tomi, Que­chua, Rhaeto-Romance, Roma­nian, Romansh (Rumantsch), Roto­kas, Sami (Inari), Sami (Lule), Samoan, Sar­di­nian (Sardu), Scots (Gae­lic), Sey­chel­lois Creole (Seselwa), Shona, Sici­lian, Slovak, Slove­nian (Slovene), Somali, Sou­thern Nde­bele, Sou­thern Sotho (Seso­tho), Spa­nish, Swa­hili, Swati/Swazi, Swe­dish, Taga­log (Filipino/Pilipino), Tahi­tian, Tau­sug, Tetum (Tetun), Tok Pisin, Ton­gan (Faka-Tonga), Tswana, Tur­kish, Turk­men, Turk­men (Lati­ni­zed), Tuva­luan, Uyghur (Lati­ni­zed), Veps, Vola­pük, Votic (Lati­ni­zed), Wal­loon, Warl­piri, Welsh, Xhosa, Yapese, Zulu ■ Spe­cials: Alter­na­tive let­ters, logo­ty­pes, ding­bats & sym­bols, accents & €. OpenType-Features like Access All Alter­na­tes (aalt), Con­text­ual Alter­na­tes (calt), Glyph Composition/Decomposition (ccmp), Dis­cre­tio­nary Liga­tures (dlig) Deno­mi­na­tors (dnom), Frac­tions (frac), Kerning (kern), Stan­dard Liga­tures (liga), Lining Figu­res (lnum), Nume­ra­tors (numr), Old Style Figu­res (onum) Ordi­nals (ordn), Pro­por­tio­nal Figu­res (pnum), Sty­listic Alter­na­tes (salt), Sty­listic Set 01 (ss01), Sty­listic Set 02 (ss02), Sty­listic Set 03 (ss03), Sty­listic Set 04 (ss04), Super­script (sups), Tabu­lar Figu­res (tnum) ■ Design Date: 2015 ■ Type Desi­gner: Manuel Viergutz

It took me a long time, but I think I now understand why people of my generation and older feel the need to frame current events in an historical context or precedents, while most of the young couldn't care less about what happened ten years ago, let alone centuries back. After living for a few decades, you get to a point when time seems to be moving quite fast, and it’s humbling to see that your entire existence so far can be summed up in a paragraph or two which may or may not be useful to whoever ends up reading the stuff anyhow. I suppose one way to cope with the serenity of aging is trying to convince yourself that your life and work are really an extension of millenia of a species striving to accept, adapt to, and improve the human condition through advancing the many facets of civilization -- basically making things more understandable and comfortable for ourselves and each other while we go about doing whatever it is we are trying to do. And when you do finally convince yourself of that, history becomes a source of much solace and even a little premonition, so you end up spending more time there. Going far back into the history of what I do, one can easily see that for the most part it was ruled by the quill. Western civilization’s writing was done with quill pens for more than thirteen centuries and with newer instruments for about two. By the mid-18th century, the height of the quill experience, various calligraphy techniques could be discerned and writing styles were arranged in distinct categories. There are many old books that showcase the history of it all. I recommend looking at some whenever the urge comes calling and you have to get away from backlit worlds. Multiple sources usually help me get a better perspective on the range of a specific script genre, so many books served as reference to this quill font of mine. Late 17th century French and Spanish professional calligraphy guides were great aides in understanding the ornamental scope of what the scribes were doing back then. The French books, with their showings of the Ronde, Bâtarde and Coulée alphabets, were the ones I referenced the most. So I decided to name the font Auberge, a French word for hotel or inn, because I really felt like a guest in different French locales (and times) when I going through all that stuff. Because it is multi-sourced, Auberge does not strictly fit in a distinct quill pen category. Instead, it shows strong hints of both Bâtarde and Coulée alphabets. And like most of my fonts, it is an exercise in going overboard with alternates, swashes, and ornamental devices. Having worked with it for a while, I find it most suitable for display calligraphic setting in general, but it works especially well for things like wine labels and event invitations. It also shines in the original quill pen application purpose, which of course was stationery. Also, as it just occurred to me, if you find yourself in a situation where you have to describe your entire life in 50 words or less, you may as well make it look good and swashy, so Auberge would probably be a good fit there as well. This is one quill script that no large bird had to die for. A few technical notes The Auberge Script Pro version includes 1800 glyphs, everything is included there. Also latin language support. We recommend you to use the latest design application to have full access to alternates, swashes, small caps, ornaments, etc. The images from the gallery uses this version. For better results use the fonts with “liga” feature on. Awards During 2014 the early develop of Auberge Script was chosen to be part of Tipos Latinos, the most important type exhibition in South America.

“Hand Stamp Play Rough Serif” is a rough and dirty serif Font with authentic & real stamp look. Original Hand Stamped. A–Z, a–z, and 0–9 are each 3× different forms (every letter/glyph has two additional alternate characters) and is intended to show the hand-made nature and the vibrancy of the display font. The different pressure (velocity) of the stamp on paper creates a liveliness in the typeface. Ligatures like ae, oe, AE, OE, ff, fl, fi, fj, ffl, ffj, ffi, and additional logotypes like and, the, by, tel fax, web, www … and a Versal Eszett (Capital Letter Double S) give the Font more life and shows that despite their retro-looks works with modern OpenType technology (from ❤ love is, from luck will ✤ … ). Replacing the glyphs “E” instead of “3” to convey that typeface invites you to play. It is the desire to experiment and promote uninhibited experimentation. A variety of alternative letters and a few glyphs follow her own head @, &, ₤, £, “,”, * … The typeface has its quirks and downright human characteristics to “just love.” Have fun with this font – Just Stamp It. Application Area The serif font works best for head­line size. Logo, Poster, Edi­to­rial Design (Maga­zine or Fan­zine) or Web­de­sign (Head­line Web­font for your web­site), Web­ban­ner, party flyer, movie pos­ter, music pos­ter, music covers … How To Use – awesome magic OpenType-Features in your layout application ■ In Adobe Photoshop and Adobe InDesign, font feature controls are within the Character panel sub-menu → OpenType → Discretionary Ligatures … Checked features are applied/on. Unchecked features are off. ■ In Adobe Illustrator, font feature controls are within the OpenType panel. Icons at the bottom of the panel are button controls. Darker ‘pressed’ buttons are applied/on. ■ Additionally in Adobe InDesign and Adobe Illustrator, alternate glyphs can manually be inserted into a text frame by using the glyphs panel. The panel can be opened by selecting Window from the menu bar → Type → Glyphs. Or use sign-overview of your operating system. ■ For a overview of OpenType-Feature compatibility for common applications, follow the myfonts-help http://www.myfonts.com/help/#looks-different ■ It may process a little bit slowly in some applications, because the font has a lot of lovely rough details (anchor points). Technical Specifications ■ Font Name: Hand Stamp Play Rough Serif ■ Font Weights: Regular, Bold ■ Fonts Category: Display for Headline Size ■ Desktop-Font: OTF (Open­Type Font for Mac + Win) + TTF (True­Type Font) ■ Web-Font: SVG + EOT + TTF + WOF ■ Font License: Desk­top license, Web license, App license, eBook license, Ser­ver license ■ Glyph coverage: 617 ■ Language Support: Albanian, Alsatian, Aragonese, Arapaho, Aromanian, Arrernte, Asturian, Aymara, Basque, Bislama, Bosnian, Breton, Cebuano, Chamorro, Cheyenne, Chichewa (Nyanja), Cimbrian, Corsican, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Finnish, French, French Creole (Saint Lucia), Frisian, Friulian, Galician, Genoese, German, Gilbertese (Kiribati), Greenlandic, Guarani, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hmong, Hopi, Hungarian, Ibanag, Iloko (Ilokano), Indonesian, Interglossa (Glosa), Interlingua, Irish (Gaelic), Islandic, Istro-Romanian, Italian, Jèrriais, Kashubian, Kurdish (Kurmanji), Ladin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lojban, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgian, Malagasy, Maltese, Manx, Maori, Megleno-Romanian, Mohawk, Nahuatl, Norfolk/Pitcairnese, Northern Sotho (Pedi), Norwegian, Occitan, Oromo, Pangasinan, Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Potawatomi, Rhaeto-Romance, Romanian, Romansh (Rumantsch), Rotokas, Sami (Inari), Sami (Lule), Samoan, Sardinian (Sardu), Scots (Gaelic), Seychellois Creole (Seselwa), Shona, Sicilian, Slovak, Slovenian (Slovene), Somali, Southern Ndebele, Southern Sotho (Sesotho), Spanish, Swahili, Swati/Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog (Filipino/Pilipino), Tahitian, Tausug, Tetum (Tetun), Tok Pisin, Tongan (Faka-Tonga), Tswana, Turkish, Turkmen, Turkmen (Latinized), Tuvaluan, Uyghur (Latinized), Veps, Volapük, Votic (Latinized), Walloon, Warlpiri, Welsh, Xhosa, Yapese, Zulu ■ Specials: Alter­na­tive let­ters, Ver­sal Eszett (Ger­man Capi­tal Sharp S), symbols, dingbats, digits, accents & €, incl. OpenType-Features like Access All Alter­na­tes (aalt), Con­text­ual Alter­na­tes (calt), Glyph Composition/Decomposition (ccmp), Dis­cre­tio­nary Liga­tures (dlig) Deno­mi­na­tors (dnom), Frac­tions (frac), Kerning (kern), Stan­dard Liga­tures (liga), Nume­ra­tors (numr), Ordi­nals (ordn), Sty­listic Alter­na­tes (salt), Sty­listic Set 01 (ss01), Sty­listic Set 02 (ss02), Sty­listic Set 03 (ss03), Super­script (sups), Slashed Zero (zero) ■ Design Date: 2014 ■ Type Designer: Manuel Viergutz

TT Mussels useful links: Specimen | Graphic presentation | Customization options About TT Mussels: The TT Mussels font family is the successor of such popular fonts as Bender and TT Squares. At the same time, TT Mussels has a number of fundamental differences that make it a unique font family that stands out from other octagonal typefaces. When designing TT Mussels, we paid great attention to the possibility of imposing large arrays of text, and we can responsibly state that TT Mussels is a rare type of technological text fonts. To go along with the rest, we've created a stencil version of the typeface, in which the location of the incisions changes according to their thickness. In total, the TT Mussels font family consists of 36 faces, which include among other things stylistic alternatives, ligatures, and also implements a broad support for OpenType features: case, frac, ordn, sups, sinf, numr, dnom, onum, tnum, pnum, liga, dlig, salt, ss01. Dynamic contrast is widely implemented in TT Mussels. It is most noticeable in the Black typeface, where the ratio of the thickness of the vertical strokes to the horizontal strokes is approximately two to one. For the Thin typeface, the thickness of the vertical strokes is already consistent with the thickness of the horizontal strokes. You can also find other signs of respect for traditional text fonts in the TT Mussels design, such as the trace of pen movement which is historically typical for antiquas. For example, in the letter M from the Black face, we can first see a thin stroke, then a thick diagonal stroke followed by a thin diagonal stroke, and a finishing bold vertical stroke. As in the case of dynamic contrast, this effect gradually disappears when approaching thin faces. In thick faces, in places such as the “armpits” of the letters MN? or the junctions of the diagonals of WVvw, there are visual compensators that brighten the bold typefaces. As the thickness of typefaces moves from thick to thin, the dimensions and conceptual values of compensators change, and in thin typefaces they completely disappear. TT Mussels language support: Acehnese, Afar, Albanian, Alsatian, Aragonese, Arumanian, Asu, Aymara, Banjar, Basque, Belarusian (cyr), Bemba, Bena, Betawi, Bislama, Boholano, Bosnian (cyr), Bosnian (lat), Breton, Bulgarian (cyr), Cebuano, Chamorro, Chiga, Colognian, Cornish, Corsican, Cree, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Embu, English, Erzya, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Gaelic, Gagauz (lat), Galician, German, Gusii, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiri Motu, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Innu-aimun, Interlingua, Irish, Italian, Javanese, Judaeo-Spanish, Judaeo-Spanish, Kalenjin, Karachay-Balkar (lat), Karaim (lat), Karakalpak (lat), Kashubian, Khasi, Khvarshi, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kongo, Kumyk, Kurdish (lat), Ladin, Latvian, Laz, Leonese, Lithuanian, Luganda, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Macedonian, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malay, Manx, Maori, Mauritian Creole, Minangkabau, Moldavian (lat), Montenegrin (lat), Mordvin-moksha, Morisyen, Nahuatl, Nauruan, Ndebele, Nias, Nogai, Norwegian, Nyankole, Occitan, Oromo, Palauan, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rheto-Romance, Rohingya, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Russian, Rusyn, Rwa, Salar, Samburu, Samoan, Sango, Sangu, Scots, Sena, Serbian (cyr), Serbian (lat), Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Shona, Slovak, Slovenian, Soga, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Swiss German, Swiss German, Tagalog, Tahitian, Taita, Tatar, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Tsonga, Tswana, Turkish, Turkmen (lat), Ukrainian, Uyghur, Vepsian, Volapük, Võro, Vunjo, Xhosa, Zaza, Zulu.

We have updated TT Rounds Neue! TT Rounds Neue was released as a logical continuation of the TT Rounds and TT Rounds Condensed fonts, more modern and technically advanced. In the update, we have preserved the visual nature of the font, the proportions of the letters and the balance between bold and thin faces. We have made the typeface even more functional and convenient by fixing technical flaws, expanding the character set and adding a full-fledged variable font. In the new version of TT Rounds Neue, you will find additional extended Latin and Cyrillic characters, updated kerning and hinting. The font can be used for headings or for text typesetting. The typeface is optimized for web, print and packaging design. Thanks to its soft character and rounded shapes, it is suitable for decorating baby food and eco-products. TT Rounds Neue consists of 3 subfamilies: Compressed, Condensed and Normal. There are 55 faces in the font: 27 upright, 27 italic, and 1 variable font. Variability is across all three axes, thickness, slope, and width. Each style has 684 glyphs. The font has 29 OpenType features, including ligatures, a set of alternative characters, old-style figures, and many others. ?Please note that we are removing the TT Rounds and TT Rounds Condensed fonts from the marketplace, but you can still get them by contacting TypeType's commercial department directly commercial@typetype.org TT Rounds Neue OpenType features: aalt, ccmp, locl, subs, sinf, sups, numr, dnom, frac, ordn, tnum, onum, lnum, pnum, case, salt, liga, dlig, calt, ss01, ss02, ss03, ss04, ss05, ss06, ss07, ss08, ss09, ss10 TT Rounds Neue language support: English, Albanian, Basque, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Moldavian (lat), Montenegrin (lat), Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Serbian (lat), Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Swiss German, Valencian, Azerbaijani, Kazakh (lat), Turkish, Acehnese, Banjar, Betawi, Bislama, Boholano, Cebuano, Chamorro, Fijian, Filipino, Hiri Motu, Ilocano, Indonesian, Javanese, Khasi, Malay, Marshallese, Minangkabau, Nauruan, Nias, Palauan, Rohingya, Salar, Samoan, Sasak, Sundanese, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Uyghur, Afar, Asu, Aymara, Bemba, Bena, Chiga, Embu, Gikuyu, Gusii, Kabuverdianu, Kalenjin, Kamba, Kikuyu, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kongo, Luganda, Luo, Luyia, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Mauritian Creole, Meru, Morisyen, Ndebele, Nyankole, Oromo, Rombo, Rundi, Rwa, Samburu, Sango, Sangu, Sena, Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Shona, Soga, Somali, Sotho, Swahili, Swazi, Taita, Tsonga, Tswana, Vunjo, Xhosa, Zulu, Maori, Alsatian, Aragonese, Arumanian, Belarusian (lat), Bosnian (lat), Breton, Colognian, Cornish, Corsican, Faroese, Frisian, Friulian, Gaelic, Gagauz (lat), Galician, Interlingua, Judaeo-Spanish, Karaim (lat), Kashubian, Ladin, Leonese, Manx, Occitan, Rheto-Romance, Romansh, Scots, Silesian, Sorbian, Vastese, Volapu?k, Vo?ro, Walloon, Walser, Karakalpak (lat), Kurdish (lat), Talysh (lat), Tsakhur (Azerbaijan), Turkmen (lat), Zaza, Aleut (lat), Cree, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Innu-aimun, Karachay-Balkar (lat), Karelian, Livvi-Karelian, Ludic, Tatar, Vepsian, Guarani, Nahuatl, Quechua,, Russian, Belarusian (cyr), Bosnian (cyr), Bulgarian (cyr), Macedonian, Serbian (cyr), Ukrainian, Gagauz (cyr), Moldavian (cyr), Kazakh (cyr), Kirghiz, Tadzhik, Turkmen (cyr), Uzbek (cyr), Lezgian, Abazin, Agul, Archi, Avar, Dargwa, Ingush, Kabardian, Kabardino-Cherkess, Karachay-Balkar (cyr), Khvarshi, Kumyk, Lak, Nogai, Ossetian, Rutul, Tabasaran, Tsakhur, Buryat, Komi-Permyak, Komi-Yazva, Komi-Zyrian, Shor, Siberian Tatar, Tofalar, Touva, Bashkir, Chechen (cyr), Chuvash, Erzya, Kryashen Tatar, Mordvin-moksha, Tatar Volgaic, Udmurt, Uighur, Rusyn, Karaim (cyr), Montenegrin (cyr), Romani (cyr), Dungan, Karakalpak (cyr), Shughni, Mongolian, Adyghe, Kalmykk

Pure and not-so-simple Maybe it’s the air of purity, openness and transparency that they transmit, but geometric typefaces are more popular than ever among leading brands. Based on near-perfect circles, triangles and squares, geometric letterforms look uncomplicated, even though making them readable is anything but – something the designers of the first wave of geometric fonts discovered nearly a century ago. Many of the world’s most recognisable brands in technology, retail, travel, food, manufacturing and other industries continue to be drawn to the straightforward, honest character that geometric fonts convey. Fontsmith set out in 2015 to develop a typeface in the same tradition, but optimised for the demands of modern brands – online and offline usage, readability and accessibility. And, of course, with the all-important Fontsmith x-factor built in. FS Lucas is the bold and deceptively simple result. Handle with care The letterforms of FS Lucas are round and generous, along the lines of Trajan Column lettering stripped of its serifs. But beware their thorns. Their designer, Stuart de Rozario, who also crafted the award-winning FS Millbank, wanted a contrast between spiky and soft, giving sharp apexes to the more angular letterforms, such as A, M, N, v, w and z. Among his inspirations were the colourful, geometric compositions of Frank Stella, the 1920s art deco poster designs of AM Cassandre, and the triangular cosmic element symbol, which led him to tackle the capital A first, instead of the usual H. The proportions and angles of the triangular form would set the template for many of the other characters. It was this form, and the light-scattering effects of triangular prisms, that lit the path to a name for the typeface: Lucas is derived from lux, the Latin word for light. Recommended reading Early geometric typefaces were accused of putting mathematical integrity before readability. FS Lucas achieves the trick of appearing geometric, while taking the edge off elements that make reading difficult. Perfectly circlular shapes don’t read well. The way around that is to slightly thicken the vertical strokes, and pull out the curves at the corners to compensate; the O and o of FS Lucas are optical illusions. Pointed apexes aren’t as sharp as they look; the flattened tips are an essential design feature. And distinctive details such as the open terminals of the c, e, f, g, j, r and s, and the x-height bar on the i and j, aid legibility, especially on-screen. These and many other features, the product of sketching the letterforms in the first instance by hand rather than mapping them out mechanically by computer, give FS Lucas the built-in humanity and character that make it a better, easier read all-round. Marks of distinction Unlike some of its more buttoned-up geometric bedfellows, FS Lucas can’t contain its natural personality and quirks: the flick of the foot of the l, for example, and the flattish tail on the g and j. The unusual bar on the J improves character recognition, and the G is circular, without a straight stem. There’s a touch of Fontsmith about the t, too, with the curve across the left cross section in the lighter weights, and the ampersand is one of a kind. There’s a lot to like about Lucas. With its 9 weights, perfect proportions and soft but spiky take on the classic geometric font, it’s a typeface that could light up any brand.

Pure and not-so-simple Maybe it’s the air of purity, openness and transparency that they transmit, but geometric typefaces are more popular than ever among leading brands. Based on near-perfect circles, triangles and squares, geometric letterforms look uncomplicated, even though making them readable is anything but – something the designers of the first wave of geometric fonts discovered nearly a century ago. Many of the world’s most recognisable brands in technology, retail, travel, food, manufacturing and other industries continue to be drawn to the straightforward, honest character that geometric fonts convey. Fontsmith set out in 2015 to develop a typeface in the same tradition, but optimised for the demands of modern brands – online and offline usage, readability and accessibility. And, of course, with the all-important Fontsmith x-factor built in. FS Lucas is the bold and deceptively simple result. Handle with care The letterforms of FS Lucas are round and generous, along the lines of Trajan Column lettering stripped of its serifs. But beware their thorns. Their designer, Stuart de Rozario, who also crafted the award-winning FS Millbank, wanted a contrast between spiky and soft, giving sharp apexes to the more angular letterforms, such as A, M, N, v, w and z. Among his inspirations were the colourful, geometric compositions of Frank Stella, the 1920s art deco poster designs of AM Cassandre, and the triangular cosmic element symbol, which led him to tackle the capital A first, instead of the usual H. The proportions and angles of the triangular form would set the template for many of the other characters. It was this form, and the light-scattering effects of triangular prisms, that lit the path to a name for the typeface: Lucas is derived from lux, the Latin word for light. Recommended reading Early geometric typefaces were accused of putting mathematical integrity before readability. FS Lucas achieves the trick of appearing geometric, while taking the edge off elements that make reading difficult. Perfectly circlular shapes don’t read well. The way around that is to slightly thicken the vertical strokes, and pull out the curves at the corners to compensate; the O and o of FS Lucas are optical illusions. Pointed apexes aren’t as sharp as they look; the flattened tips are an essential design feature. And distinctive details such as the open terminals of the c, e, f, g, j, r and s, and the x-height bar on the i and j, aid legibility, especially on-screen. These and many other features, the product of sketching the letterforms in the first instance by hand rather than mapping them out mechanically by computer, give FS Lucas the built-in humanity and character that make it a better, easier read all-round. Marks of distinction Unlike some of its more buttoned-up geometric bedfellows, FS Lucas can’t contain its natural personality and quirks: the flick of the foot of the l, for example, and the flattish tail on the g and j. The unusual bar on the J improves character recognition, and the G is circular, without a straight stem. There’s a touch of Fontsmith about the t, too, with the curve across the left cross section in the lighter weights, and the ampersand is one of a kind. There’s a lot to like about Lucas. With its 9 weights, perfect proportions and soft but spiky take on the classic geometric font, it’s a typeface that could light up any brand.

Useful links: Using the variable font TT Alientz in InDesign About TT Alientz: TT Alientz is a variable* typeface that allows the user to make a visual journey from a laconic extraterrestrial grotesque to a very prickly display serif. As part of this project, we decided to investigate the influence of a foreign substance and the consequent transformation of the original forms, which ultimately leads to extreme visual changes. The TT Alientz family consists of 3 fonts: grotesque, serif and variable* font. Each font contains more than 470 glyphs. In addition to broad language support (including Cyrillic), the typeface has stylish ligatures, contextual alternates, and old-style figures. Variability in the typeface affects the changes in the overall style of the font—moving the slider to adjust the variable axis, you can go from a laconic grotesque to an extreme serif. TT Alientz Grotesque is a fairly neat hipster grotesque, but with its own small features. In the design of some letters of the grotesque you can find small sharp elements that add uniqueness and character to the font when used in large inscriptions and headings. At the same time, when you use the font in a small size of the size and in text blocks, sharp elements do not greatly affect its readability. The design of some letters of the grotesque is quite peculiar and is intended to emphasize the initial concept of slight 'alienness'. TT Alientz Serif is an 'infected' TT Alientz Grotesque and the result of changes to it. Unlike the grotesque, the serif is dynamic, viscous, ductile and very prickly. Serif has a lot of smooth lines and not quite standard strokes contrast. It can be noted that most serifs in the antiqua are pointed inward, not outward. Despite its extremeness, the serif will look good both in large and in small body sizes. *An important clarification regarding variable fonts. At the moment, not all graphic editors, programs and browsers support variable fonts. You can check the status of support for the variability of your software here: v-fonts.com/support/ FOLLOW US: Instagram | Facebook | Website TT Alientz supports more than 160+ languages, such as: Acehnese, Afar, Albanian, Alsatian, Aragonese, Arumanian, Asu, Aymara, Banjar, Basque, Belarusian (cyr), Bemba, Bena, Betawi, Bislama, Boholano, Bosnian (cyr), Bosnian (lat), Breton, Bulgarian (cyr), Cebuano, Chamorro, Chiga, Colognian, Cornish, Corsican, Cree, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Embu, English, Erzya, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Gaelic, Gagauz (lat), Galician, German, Gusii, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiri Motu, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Innu-aimun, Interlingua, Irish, Italian, Javanese, Judaeo-Spanish, Judaeo-Spanish, Kabuverdianu, Kalenjin, Karachay-Balkar (lat), Karaim (lat), Karakalpak (lat), Kashubian, Khasi, Khvarshi, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kongo, Kumyk, Kurdish (lat), Ladin, Latvian, Laz, Leonese, Lithuanian, Luganda, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Macedonian, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Malay, Manx, Maori, Marshallese, Mauritian Creole, Minangkabau, Moldavian (lat), Montenegrin (cyr), Montenegrin (lat), Mordvin-moksha, Morisyen, Nahuatl, Nauruan, Ndebele, Nias, Nogai, Norwegian, Nyankole, Occitan, Oromo, Palauan, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rheto-Romance, Rohingya, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Russian, Rusyn, Rwa, Salar, Samburu, Samoan, Sango, Sangu, Scots, Sena, Serbian (cyr), Serbian (lat), Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Shona, Slovak, Slovenian, Soga, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Swiss German, Swiss German, Tagalog, Tahitian, Taita, Tatar, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Tsonga, Tswana, Turkish, Turkmen (lat), Ukrainian, Uyghur, Vepsian, Volapük, Võro, Vunjo, Walloon, Xhosa, Zaza, Zulu.

Whatever the medium, Girard’s love for typography was the common thread that wove his work together. We are honored that the Girard family has entrusted us to celebrate and expand upon the legacy of this design icon with this collection of fonts. The Girard Slab family gracefully synthesizes illustrative sensibilities into a practical typographic framework. Slab’s three widths and four weights ensure versatility in a modern editorial setting while its gentle curves transcend the sterility of traditional typography to add an unprecedented warmth and personality. From boutique chocolate packaging to the titling sequence for an indie vegan superhero cartoon, Girard Script deftly adds a contemporary sophistication to text and display settings. Inspired by a workhorse lettering style that helped Alexander Girard implement thousands of design elements in his overhaul of the Braniff identity system, Girard Sky pulls its weight in any contemporary application. In Girard Sansusie, each character stands alone as an illustrative element while coming together with its counterparts as a whimsical yet functional typeface. FEATURES: The ligatures feature substitutes specially-drawn letter combinations that combine two, three or even four characters to create smoother transitions and simulate lettering sensibilities. Girard Slab’s three widths and four weights ensure versatility in a modern editorial setting while its gentle curves transcend the sterility of traditional typography to add an unprecedented warmth and personality. Copious alternate characters and “smart” OpenType programming allow Sansusie to escape the rigid confines of typography to come alive as if flowing from Girard’s sketchpad. This animation shows a sampling of the swash characters available in the font. GIRARD CREDITS: Typeface Design: Alexander Girard, Ben Kiel, Ken Barber, Laura Meseguer Typeface Production: Ben Kiel Typeface Direction: Christian Schwartz, Andy Cruz, Ken Barber Like all good subversives, House Industries hides in plain sight while amplifying the look, feel and style of the world’s most interesting brands, products and people. Based in Delaware, visually influencing the world.

Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and feast your eyes on the most dazzling typeface in the land! Paltime is the star of the show, with its all-caps display font and dotted “marquee lights” style that will light up any design like a three-ring circus. But that’s not all, folks! Paltime is a font that knows how to have fun, with layers of dots, hearts, and stars that can be stacked on top of the solid layer to create a multicolored effect that will leave your audience in awe! It’s like a carnival in your design, and everyone is invited. And even if you prefer to keep it simple, Paltime has got you covered. The Marquee, Love, and Glam styles are all standouts on their own, perfect for when you need a monochrome setting or just can’t get enough layer stacking in your life. So come on down to the Paltime font party and join the fun! With its circus barker style, this typeface will be the talk of the town and the star of your design! 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.

This all started with a love for Minister. This is a font designed by Carl Albert Fahrenwaldt in 1929. In the specimen booklet there’s a scan from Linotype’s page many years ago. They no longer carry the font. I’ve gone quite a ways from the original. It was dark and a bit heavy. But I loved the look and the readability. This came to a head when I started my first book on all-digital printing written from 1994-1995, and published early in 1996. I needed fonts to show the typography I was talking about. At that point oldstyle figures, true small caps, and discretionary ligatures were rare. More than that text fonts for book design had lining OR oldstyle figures, lowercase OR small caps—never both. So, I designed the Diaconia family (using the Greek word for minister). It was fairly rough. I knew very little. I later redesigned and updated Diaconia into Bergsland Pro —released in 2004. It was still rough (though I impressed myself). In 2006, I found myself needing a readable sans serif. So I went to Bergsland Pro, and eliminated the serifs. I named the font Brinar. I kept a flare in place for the serifs and cupped the ends. I was stunned. People loved it. It’s remained my bestseller until very recently. So, at the end of 2016 I decided that Brinar really needed some help. The flares were basically random. The stem width and modulation variances all needed to be fixed. My old OpenType feature code was quite limited and clumsy. So, I created the 6-font Biblia family. I cleaned up or redesigned all the glyphs. I updated the fonts to the 2017 set of features: small caps, small cap figures, oldstyle figures, fractions, lining figures, ligatures and discretionary ligatures. These are fonts designed for book production and work well for text or heads.

Ten years or so after his unique treatment of Garalde design with Trump Mediaeval, Georg Trump took on the transitional genre with Mauritius, which was to be his last typeface. He started working on it in 1965. The Stuttgart-based Weber foundry published a pamphlet previewing it under the name Barock-Antiqua in 1967, then announced the availability of the metal types (a roman, a bold and an italic) a year later. The global printing industry was already in third gear with cold type technology, so there weren't that many takers, and Weber closed its doors after more than 140 years in business. Subsequently, Trump’s swan song was unfairly overlooked by typography historians and practitioners. It never made it to film technology or scalable fonts. Thus, one of the most original text faces ever made, done by one of the most influential German type designers of the 20th century, was buried under decades of multiple technology shifts and fading records. The metal cuts of Mauritius seem to have been rushed in Weber’s desperation to stay afloat. So the only impressions left of the metal type, the sole records remaining of this design, show substantial problems. Some can be attributed to technological limitations, but some issues in colour, precision and fitting are also quite apparent, particularly in Mauritius Kursiv, the italic metal cut. This digital version is the result of obsessing over a great designer’s final type design effort, and trying to understand the reasons behind its vanishing from typography’s collective mind. While that understanding remains for the most part elusive, the creative and technical work done on these fonts produced very concrete results. All the apparent issues in the metal types were resolved, the design was expanded into a larger family of three weights and two widths, and plenty of 21st century bells and whistles were added. For the full background story, design analysis, details, features, specimens and print tests, consult the PDF available in the Gallery section of this page.

Marintas is a sleek upright italic that offers you a modern look and feel. This elegant sans serif comes across as lively, yet comfortable. Some semi slab characteristics of the font give it a face-forward momentum. These semi slabs, even with their geometric construction, are fluid shapes with a soft hint of brushstroke. The soft curves of Marintas paired with its playful but geometric semi slabs or ending strokes give the face its spirited--though friendly--eye-catching appearance. The Marintas family is comprised of 8 variants, ranging from Thin to Ultra. Its incredible versatility ranges from the delicate hairline to the extreme ultra weight. The heavier weights show some similarity to Antique Olive, and the face has an exuberant South American or Latin feel. This type of family is well-suited for advertising, retail, food and beverage products as well as for use in magazines, logotypes, and books. The fonts lend themselves to display settings, but are still very usable for longer copy. Because of its large x-height, the typeface is legible at very small sizes and as a webfont. Marintas has support for extended Latin character set. A wide range of Western languages are also supported, including Central, Eastern and Western European languages. In all, Marintas supports over 40 languages that use the extended Latin script, making Marintas a great choice for multi-lingual publications and packaging. All insigne fonts are fully loaded with OpenType features. Marintas is also equipped for complex professional typography and includes ligatures, alternate characters and fractions. The face includes a number of numeral sets, including old-style and lining figures with superiors and inferiors. OpenType-savvy applications such as Quark or the Adobe Creative Suite can take full advantage of the automatically replacing ligatures and alternates. This family also includes the glyphs to support a wide range of languages. Check out the informative .pdf brochure to see these features in action.

The x factor How do you make a font like FS Albert unique, distinctive? “When designing a font I try to question every letter,” says Jason Smith, “but all you need is a few that have an x factor. With FS Albert, they’re the lowercase ‘a’ and ‘g’ and the uppercase ‘I’ and ‘J’. “I remember a friend saying, ‘Why on earth have you designed the ‘a’ like that? Isn’t it too friendly for this kind of font?’ And, in a way, that’s what I wanted – honesty and warmth, because a lot of big brands at the time really needed to show a more human side.” Range of weights and styles FS Albert is a charismatic type: a warm, friendly sans serif face with a big personality. Open, strong and amenable, and available in a wide range of weights and styles, FS Albert suits almost every task you put it to. Fontsmith has crafted five finely-tuned upright Roman weights and four italic weights, as well as a special Narrow version to provide the best coverage and give headlines and text an easy-going character. The chunky kid “FS Albert was inspired by – and named after – my son, who was a bit of a chunky kid,” says Jason Smith. “I designed an extra bold weight because I always felt that the really big font heavy weights had the most personality. “I recently told Albert this story. He laughed, and forgave me for thinking he was a fat baby. He liked the big personality bit, though.” 1000s of glyphs Not content with a character set that covered Europe and the whole of the Western world, the studio decided to go further afield. There are now FS Albert character sets that cover western and eastern European languages, including those of Russia, as well as Cyrillic, Arabic and Greek scripts. In fact, the font now covers more than 100 languages, making it ideal for bringing a consistent typographic style to the communications of global brands.

Petrarka may be described as a Condensed, Sans-Serif, Semi-Fatface Roman. Huh? Bear with me on this. The Fatface is a name given to the popular nineteenth-century romans that where characterized by an extremity of contrast between the thick and thin stroke. The earliest example that is generally familiar is Thorowgood, believed to have been designed by Robert Thorne and released by Thorowgood Foundry in 1820 as "Five-line Pica No. 5." Copied by many foundries, it became one of the more popular advertising types of the day. Later, in the period from about 1890 to 1950, you find a number of typeface designs with the thin stroke beefed up a bit, not quite so extreme. What you might call Semi-Fatfaced Romans begin to replace the extreme Fatfaces. Serifed designs like Bauer’s Bernard Roman Extra Bold and ATF’s Bold Antique appear. In addition, we see the development of semi-fatface lineals or Sans-Serif Semi-Fatfaces. Examples include Britannic (Stephenson Blake), Chambord Bold (Olive), Koloss (Ludwig & Mayer), Matthews (ATF) and Radiant Heavy (Ludlow). Petrarka has much in common with this latter group, but is distinguished by two salient features: it is condensed and it shows a strong blackletter influence, as seen in the ‘H’ particularly. Petrark was released about 1900 by the German foundry of Schelter & Giesecke of Leipzig and is one of the designs of the period that attempts to reconcile roman and blackletter traditions. Making a cameo appearance in this Multi-Lingual font is the Anglo-Saxon letter yogh (#729), which, along with the thorn and the eth, is always useful for preparing flyers in Old English. There are still pockets of resistance to the Norman French influence that washed up on England’s shores in 1066. This font stands with King Canute, seeking to hold back the tide (ignoring the fact that Canute was a Dane). Support the fight to preserve Anglo-Saxon culture. Buy Petrarka ML today. Petrarka Initials brings together the Petrarka upper case letters with a very sympatico Art Nouveau rendering of a female face.

Grava is Neil Summerour’s injection of warmth within the geometric sans font category. Historically, geometric sans families have been based on primal shapes — triangle, circle, square — and the more closely they held to those rigid rules, the more internal inconsistencies they showed. Angles won’t match up correctly, letters will lean, overshoots complicate clean typesetting, and idealized circles become grotesque and unwieldy in some weights. Because of issues like these, geometric sans fonts have a reputation of being cold, austere, even a bit “off”. Grava was made to hold a T-square and triangle in one hand while giving a welcoming handshake with the other. The Grava font family comes in two styles (a normal and a Display), each with 20 weights (Thin to Ultra) and paired with italics. Its design allowed the three scripts of Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek to emerge seamlessly, ensuring Grava will find its home in multilingual publications. Even better, each character in the three scripts is spaced with every other character for a beautifully matched fit, and it’s a buy-one-get-all-three deal since they are all packaged together. The normal style’s large x-height won’t let you down in paragraphs, headings, and any call-out text. And have you seen the angles on those numerals? Pairing Grava’s numerals on a jersey is sure to catch some eyes, just sayin'. Grava Display is purposefully quirky and sharp, and made for poster sizes, book and album covers, and those websites with a well-defined character — somewhere between playfully self-aware and overtly vintage. Flat edges are abandoned to make way for sharp points and conspicuousness, for geometrical attitude and respectful expressiveness. Corporate reports use Grava Display to take on a professional and current look. The optional ligatures (N–T, L–L, G–A, C–O, almost anywhere an ‘A’ is placed, and more) in both the normal and Display styles invoke a midcentury modernist and high art feel. Now that introductions are done, you can let go of Grava’s hand and put it to work for you.

The Brass Family has a lineage that extends into English history. About five hundred years ago a devout, but anonymous Englishman gave glory to the God he worshipped by designing the capital letters and decorations of these two fonts. Originally recorded in The History Of Mediaeval Alphabets And Devices by Henry Shaw (London 1853), they are described by Alexander Nesbitt in his Decorative Alphabets And Initials (Mineola, NY 1959) as “Initials and stop ornaments from brasses in Westminster Abbey.” I wish I could say I remember seeing them when I was there, but that was forty-two years ago and all I remember was seeing the tomb of Edward the Confessor. One definition of “stop” as a noun is a point of punctuation. I have heard people from the British Isles speak of a “full stop” when referring to a period. Some may remember a 19th century form of communication called a telegram being read aloud in an old movie, with the use of the word “stop” to indicate the end of a sentence or fragment. A full dozen of these stop ornaments are provided. They occupy positions 060, 062, 094, 123, 125, 126, 135, 137, 167, 172, 177 & 190. The Brass Family consists of two fonts: Brass and Brass Too. Both fonts have an identical upper case and ornaments, but paired with different lower cases. Although the typefaces from which the lower cases were drawn are both of modern design, both are interpretations of the textura style of blackletter in use in England when the upper case and ornaments were fashioned for the Abbey. Brass is paired with Morris Gothic, which matches the color of the upper case quite well. Brass Too is paired with Wedding Regular, which is distinctly lighter than the upper case. I find it very interesting how each connects differently. The resulting fonts are unusual and most useful for evoking an historic atmosphere.