Martian Grotesk is a large typeface family originally designed for the screen which consists of a variable font with 2 axes of variation and 63 styles: Condensed to Ultra Wide, Thin to Ultra Black. Aesthetics The font style is characterized by some brutality and assertiveness. Overhanging terminals, a closed aperture, and an almost complete lack of contrast lead to this effect. Additionally, some elements of the letters are especially enlarged. This font gives any text the impression of being a “signature” style. Nevertheless, we still maintain the golden mean between its rebellious nature and readability. Perfect for web development We created Martian Grotesk for the web and digital project world. When laying out web pages, frontend developers are constantly faced with the fact that uneven metrics do not allow text to be evenly placed on some design element, for example, on a button. Instead, they have to compensate in some way, like making the top padding smaller and the bottom padding larger in CSS. This little deal really hurts. Also, if your project adheres to design system principles, you might be unable to stand a lack of systematic approach when working with fonts. We researched and calculated vertical metrics and set them up in a way that guarantees equal space above the cap height and under the baseline. This enables the text labels to be evenly placed on buttons, inputs, lists, and forms. In addition, we found a proper ratio of the letter heights, so, with commonly used font sizes—10, 15, and 20 pixels—the glyph heights stick to the pixel grid. As a result, the letter shapes become sharper, which reduces the load on the reader's eyes and simply looks much better. The typeface also comes equipped with OpenType and TrueType hinting, and Martian Grotesk appears legible on most platforms, even when being rendered in small sizes. When coupled together, all the above features make Martian Grotesk a reasonable choice for any user interface design. Roadmap Martian Grotesk right now is a work-in-progress product. The font is completely ready for professional use, however, many great features are still ahead! For example, support for Extended Cyrillic characters, and italics. Pricing Purchasing an early version of the font presents the opportunity to get it at a very attractive price! That’s because with every new version, costs will go up to reflect the additional value that comes with every release. But after purchasing Martian Grotesk, all its future updates are included for free!

An inline adaptation of a distinctive slab serif, Cesium is an unusually responsive display face that maintains its high energy across a range of different moods. The Cesium typeface was designed by Jonathan Hoefler in 2020. An energetic inline adaptation of Hoefler’s broad-shouldered Vitesse Black typeface (2000), Cesium is named for the fifty-fifth member of the periodic table of the elements, a volatile liquid metal that presents as a scintillating quicksilver. From the desk of the designer, Jonathan Hoefler: I always felt that our Vitesse typeface, an unusual species of slab serif, would take well to an inline. Vitesse is based not on the circle or the ellipse, but on a less familiar shape that has no common name, a variation on the ‘stadium’ that has two opposing flat edges, and two gently rounded sides. In place of sharp corners, Vitesse uses a continuously flowing stroke to manage the transition between upright and diagonal lines, most apparent on letters like M and N. A year of making this gesture with my wrist, both when drawing letterforms and miming their intentions during design critiques, left me thinking about a reduced version of the typeface, in which letters would be defined not by inside and outside contours, but by a single, fluid raceway. Like most straightforward ideas, this one proved challenging to execute, but its puzzles were immensely satisfying to solve. Adding an inline to a typeface is the quickest way to reveal its secrets. All the furtive adjustments in weight and size that a type designer makes — relieving congestion by thinning the center arm of a bold E, or lightening the intersecting strokes of a W — are instantly exposed with the addition of a centerline. Adapting an existing alphabet to accommodate this inline called for renovating every single character (down to the capital I, the period, and even the space), in some cases making small adjustments to reallocate weight, at other times redesigning whole parts of the character set. The longer we worked on the typeface, the more we discovered opportunities to turn these constraints into advantages, solving stubbornly complex characters like € and § by redefining how an inline should behave, and using these new patterns to reshape the rest of the alphabet. The New Typeface The outcome is a typeface we’re calling Cesium. It shares many of Vitesse’s qualities, its heartbeat an energetic thrum of motorsports and industry, and it will doubtless be welcome in both hardware stores and Hollywood. But we’ve been surprised by Cesium’s more reflective moods, its ability to be alert and softspoken at the same time. Much in the way that vibrant colors can animate a typeface, we’ve found that Cesium’s sensitivity to spacing most effectively changes its voice. Tighter leading and tracking turns up the heat, heightening Cesium’s sporty, high-tech associations, but with the addition of letterspacing it achieves an almost literary repose. This range of voices recommends Cesium not only to logos, book covers, and title sequences, but to projects that regularly must adjust their volume, such as identities, packaging, and editorial design. Read more about how to use Cesium. About the Name Cesium is a chemical element, one of only five metals that’s liquid at room temperature. Resembling quicksilver, cesium is typically stored in a glass ampule, where the tension between a sturdy outer vessel and its volatile contents is scintillating. The Cesium typeface hopes to capture this quality, its bright and insistent inline restrained by a strong and sinuous container. Cesium is one of only three H&Co typefaces whose name comes from the periodic table, a distinction it shares with Mercury and Tungsten. At a time when I considered a more sci-fi name for the typeface, I learned that these three elements have an unusual connection: they’re used together in the propulsion system of nasa’s Deep Space 1, the first interplanetary spacecraft powered by an ion drive. I found the association compelling, and adopted the name at once, with the hope that designers might employ the typeface in the same spirit of discovery, optimism, and invention. —JH Featured in: Best Fonts for Logos

A font perfect for not just one, but many projects! Introducing Oceanwide Pro, a sans that loves to be used in just about any situation! Designed with ultra clean lines and versatility in mind, Oceanwide wants to be your new favorite sans! Oceanwide’s ultra clean letters work anywhere you want to communicate orderliness and competence, and designed to build trust and rapport with your audience. Its wide proportions make it ideal for display and logo use. Oceanwide especially shines for white/bright letters on black/dark backgrounds! That’s because the inside shapes are nearly perfect circles in many weights. Here's a quick video tour of Oceanwide Pro by Dave Lawrence, including all the great things Oceanwide can be used for! We've tested Oceanwide for these industries, with stunning results!: Tech Arts Fashion & Style Business & Branding Corporations Logistics Architecture Food and many more... Oceanwide can be used for: Headers Subheadlines Logos Even body text, if tracked. Print & Screen The styles it can take are also many. It's great for: Modern/minimalist design Flat design Cut out design User Interface (UI) Technical designs In combination with text effects, even for grunge and other situations. And many others... DESIGN FEATURES Simplicity Tall x-height Hand-sloped obliques (italics) Narrow spacing Semi-wide proportions Expert kerning Well proportioned, usable lights & extra lights Large caps Great ALL CAPS MODE Uppercase punctuation Uppercase spacing with California Type Foundry’s Smart Tracking™ Advanced fraction support Proportional lining figures Thick joins Smooth curves Sturdy—great for textures and effects Variable font available Latin Pro character set for Central European languages. That's the writing for over 782 languages and transliterations worldwide! DESIGN STORY—THE FORGOTTEN SANS by Dave Lawrence, Lead Designer, California Type Foundry Adrian Frutiger was the 20th century master of sans, but I didn't realize he had made—not one—but TWO geometric sans! It wasn't until I had purchased the book “Adrian Frutiger: Typefaces”. I had hoped to someday meet Adrian Frutiger, but he passed away that very same year. Here is the story of Frutiger's forgotten sans. Back in 1968, Frutiger was approached by Pentagram to make a design for British Petroleum. They wanted a "new version of Futura". However, they wanted him to make a couple adjustments. First, they felt that Futura was "too fiddly." By this, they meant that it narrowed too much at the joins. (Joins are for example where the round and straight parts of the 'd' meet.) This is something that is necessary for small print text (to prevent ink clogging), but is not necessary at large sizes. Second, they wanted it to be entirely geometric, using the circular shape with minimal optical corrections. Unfortunately this font was not even used very consistently in the BP brand. A haphazard mix of Futura and Frutiger's BP font ensued. It was then replaced by another font design very soon after. My design is different in several ways. First, the commas and quotes are a more modern style. I tried his original commas, but these just didn’t work to 21st century eyes. Second, in his drawings, Frutiger went for a more standard u with a downstroke on the right. However, Oceanwide has a simpler u. Third, I made more optical adjustments. At the direction of his employer, Frutiger reluctantly put no font optical corrections into the letters. So I think my optical adjustments are similar to what Frutiger would have wanted. Fourth, I extended the weight into the light and extra light ranges. Fifth, the rest of the font I created according to the principles of Adrian Frutiger, but with no sources for inspiration. Here is Frutiger’s design philosophy, in his own words: “If you remember the shape of your spoon at lunch, it has to be the wrong shape. The spoon and the letter are tools; one to take food from the bowl, the other to take information off the page... When it is a good design, the reader has to feel comfortable because the letter is both banal and beautiful.” The words about the spoon were the ones I kept in my mind as I tried to make the curves ultra smooth, and the shapes ultra simple. Hopefully this font is a worthy successor to the font that inspired it. Released on the 93rd birthday of Adrian Frutiger, to celebrate the life and achievements of this amazing designer. ——————— Simplicity. Versatility. Oceanwide.

While browsing through a sourcebook on historic calligraphy and antique type I came on an interesting sample of a gothic style attributed to the legendary artist Albrecht Durer. I had previously seen fonts based on the peculiar style of lettering Durer used on prints for his signature and some captions, but this style was radically different and much more characteristic of the lettering and early printed types of the 'Northern Renaissance' which Durer was a big part of. Whether it's authentically Durer's work or not is up in the air, but it's a very nice example of early gothic type. We've called the resulting font Albrecht Durer Gothic and it's a very striking face well suited to titles and other contemporary uses where you need something heavy and eye catching.

Revolution Gothic P font family is designed based on Revolution Gothic and a distressed offshoot from the original. Revolution Gothic is an arranged and extended version of PAG Revolucion released from Prop-A-Ganda type foundry in 2008. The original font is inspired by retro propaganda posters and wallpainting in Cuba from the 60s to 80s. And the original PAG Revolucion is the most popular font from Prop-A-Ganda. The glyphs that damaged by printing the original had been tweaked by hand work with great care to be looked like natural damaged effect. This Revolution Gothic P family contains basic Roman, Italic, Bold and it’s Italic to suit a wide range of your creative works and it will be one of the most powerful solutions for printing and web.

In 2006 the art director of Emotion, a women’s psychology magazine, asked me to design a copy typeface for them. Before I actually got the job I started to work on a serif. I wanted it to be feminine but still clear and modern. On one hand there are the floral round elements and on the other hand the angular serifs. In the composition I wanted the two extremes to work together. All the other elements had to be harmonized. The proportions needed to match the magazine’s requirements. The ascenders and descenders are short enough to work in narrow columns but long enough to work in small sizes. As you can imagine, the emotion-job never happened. In copy you should not get heavier than Heavy. Extrabold and Ultrabold work best in display.

Satellite PT started out as an experiment. Wanting to explore the geometry of using angles instead of curves, I started sketching out the face using grid paper. I had seen similar fonts that tended to be completely symmetrical. My exploration tended to include what I humorously call 'faux humanist' elements, such as asymmetrical bowls, tapers and 'flare-serifs' (for lack of a better word) for select terminals. The result was a quirky and interesting face at display sizes. However, at small sizes, as ink bleed starts to take over, the angles disappear in favor of the overall forms (rounded bowls, etc.) and the 'faux-humanist' effects start to mimic modulation found in more traditional, modulated text faces. While it is hardly a true text face, the result is surprising legibility at text sizes.

In 1978 I went to work at Mergenthaler as a letter drawer. Being an inquisitive sort I decided that I should take a stab at this type design 'stuff'. I drew 25 or 30 glyphs before the work found its way to a high shelf in a dark corner of my apartment. Just 23 years later I found the drawings on a different shelf, in a different home, in a different city and decided to finish what I had started. I'm still trying to deal with my predisposition toward procrastination but I've finished the font. The name of the font is the last name of somebody I played softball with before I moved to Beantown. Ronnie Geis was one of the courageous firefighters we lost on September 11th when the WTC collapsed.

Opinion varies regarding the role of Claude Garamond (ca. 1480–1561) in the development of the Old Face font, Garamond. What is accepted is the influence this font had on other typeface developments from the time of its creation to the present. Garamond, or Garamont, is related to the alphabet of Claude Garamond (1480–1561) as well as to the work of Jean Jannon (1580–1635 or 1658), much of which was attributed to Garamond. In comparison to the earlier Italian font forms, Garamond has finer serifs and a generally more elegant image. The Garamond of Jean Jannon was introduced at the Paris World’s Fair in 1900 as “Original Garamond”, whereafter many font foundries began to cast similar types. Simoncini Garamond was designed by Francesco Simoncini to be true to the Original.

Scriptissimo is, as the name says, very much of a script! It is in the best American tradition. A script that could have served for writing the Constitution with, if only they would have had computers at that time. Scriptissimo consists of three different scripts that are meant to be used together. One is the script with the more or less plain characters. Two is the version for characters to start a word with. Three is the cut that has the characters for the end of a word. Ligatures is used for, well, ligatures and some glyphs like Ltd., GmbH, and so on. Scriptissimo is a very elegant and versatile script. It can be used for chocolate bars as well as stock certificates. I really enjoyed designing it. Yours scriptissimo, Gert Wiescher

ITC Ironwork is the work of Serge Pichii, who was inspired by a piece of decorative lettering done by Jan Tschichold in the early 1920s. Tschichold had interlocked a series of rough sans serif letters and embellished them with scattered decorative elements. The original was of only capital letters, touching and overlapping like an ironwork gate made of letters. Pichii completed the typeface with lowercase forms and smoothed the edges. The scrolls of the capitals were extended to the lowercase and Pichii based them on iron scrollwork he found in Vienna and Prague. A lot of attention was paid to the elements of the typeface in order to 'smooth out' and balance proportional relations between the elements," says Pichii. ITC Ironwork is great for signage and display but also works well in short texts."

The original Headhunter shareware font was created in ©1992 by the famous D. Rakowski. It consisted of 63 unique skeletal Glyphs, including Capital A-Z, and a few bone symbols, but lacked lowercase and numerals. He has since abandoned his fonts to pursue other things. (You can download it from FontSquirrel for free.) I've always enjoyed this limited Halloween font, but its incompleteness had to be rectified; thus I took it upon myself to delve slightly into the world of typography, resulting in the birth of HeadhunterTwo. I've slightly reworked his original contribution and "fleshed out" more of the font than necessary. As of this writing, it consists of 777+ Glyphs and passes Underware's compatibility test for Latin Plus (Supporting 219 Latin based languages, which are spoken in 212 countries.)

This year we attended the Bologna Children’s Book Fair in Italy. In our days off, we went to Piazza Maggiore to see what the city had to offer and luckily for us we saw an incredible store sign saying CAMPORA. We took some pictures of the typed font and later back in the studio we discovered that it was Dynamo. Immediately our minds were blown away by its beauty and thus we decided to design a new font inspired by its sharp and geometric design adding new weights and OpenType features. In the process we realized that both Dynamo and one of our favorite fonts Avant Garde, share a similar structure, so we made a type mashup between these beauties, including the sharpness of Dynamo and the revolutionary ligatures of Avant Garde.

Skeletal Wish is a line from one of my favourite Opeth songs: Heir Apparent. The lyrics are pretty veiled and bleak, describing the destruction and downfall of something that once was beautiful. I am worried about what is happening with our planet: the Amazon forest is burning down, our oceans are full of plastic and the earth is warming up. I had to think of this when I created Skeletal Wish and I thought the title was perfect. Skeletal Wish is a heavy and scary halloween font. It comes with blobs, splatter, gore and whatever else you may need for your designs. It won’t help save the Amazon rainforest, nor will it stop the flow of marine plastic, but you could use it to create a protest sign. After all, the change begins with you.

Dorriss girls were the dancing troop at the Moulin Rouge. I had the idea for this font while trying to come up with an alternative to beveling. I thought it would be interesting to create this sort of stepped effect as I've never really seen this treatment on a font before. Then my need to create chaos shows up again with Doriss Girls informal. A hand drawn take on the forms. This seemed like it would appear on an old art nouveau poster by the great Toulouse Lautrec, so there you have the genesis of this font. I've been somewhat compelled by the letterforms so I may expand and create a more normal version of this font someday with a range of weights. That would be the bees knees.

The first glyphs of Nougat Script were born in 2010 to honor the birth of my first chubby and charming daughter, Siena. The ongoing project with significant progress was presented at Tipos Latinos, the biennal of Latin America typography where Nougat Script was selected among 70 of the best fonts. After a long pause, the project had a powerful restart at the begining of 2018. In those days, it not only grew in number of signs but in complexity of behavior. There are 4 different types of writing within the same font file accesible via opentype features: Script (base or normal), two glyphic alternatives with well differentiated swashes and finally a small cap version. Nougat Script has a fresh and relaxed lettering attitude combined with the typographic harshness for elegant text compositions.

Star Ornaments are seen as a long standing companion to many wood type poster layouts. Various manufacturers managed to derive many variations of the five pointed star motif and offered them as a ubiquitous ornament option in almost all of their catalogs. Manufacturers such as Wm. H Page, Morgans & Wilcox, Tubbs Mfg. Co. and of course, Hamilton Wood Type each had their own slight variations. This digital font features almost 100 glyphs of mostly stars, but it also features a unique star border that can create boxes just like the modular offerings of the 19th century. The twist on this digital version is the inclusion of additional connection options that become a unique lettering 'kit' that can create typography or maze-like connections using a limited set of component parts.

Marathon was originally designed by Rudolf Koch in 1931 for Schriftgiesserei Klingspor. It is a roman with short ascenders and descenders. The serifs are small, but longer at the ends of the arms of E, F and L, M is rather splayed and is without top serifs, like M in other typefeaces designed by Rudolf Koch. The lowercase g has no link and an open tail, again like the g in other Koch types. U has the lower-case design. In the W the middle strokes cross, the lower case w has no middle serif. The figures are short-ranging. Ute Harder from the Fachhochschule Hamburg had redesigned Marathon with the help and supervision of Professor Jovica Veljovic. She has added a book weight to offer more flexibility with this beautiful typeface.

During the Covid pandemic, I noticed that a lot of public figures (politicians, actors, influencers and even kings and princesses) had to apologise for not following the social distance rules, the lockdown rules or the 'stay at home' rules. They threw parties, went on holidays abroad and - in general - made a nuisance of themselves. When I finished this font, I decided to call it Public Figure! Public Figure is quite a neat, handmade font. It doesn't stick to the rules (but does like to keep up appearances), likes to party (but manages to stay safe) and brightens up your work (without being too gaudy). Public Figure comes with two alternate sets for the lower case glyphs (that cycle as you type) and a massive amount of diacritics, including Vietnamese.

THE DANISH RUNES Prior to 500 AD the 24-rune Elder Futhark was used in Denmark. From 500 AD to 800 AD there were many transitional futharks, reflecting a change from the 24-rune Futhark to the 16-rune Futharks. By the end of this period, the 24-rune Futhark went completely out of use and the 16-rune Futharks had prevailed. From 900 AD some of the runes changed, visually and phonetically. This occurred again about 950 AD and 1100 AD due to language changes. Runes dated to 1300 AD show evidence of being influenced by the Latin alphabet. Runes found in Skåne, Halland and Blekinge in Sweden, and runes found in Schleswig-Holstein in Germany, is counted among Danish runes, because in the Runic period, this was Danish land.

The Klutz AOE Pro Family was inspired by the plethora of naive hand drawn lettering becoming commonplace in modern advertising. What I hadn't seen was a family of hand drawn typefaces, in a range of widths and weights, with both alternate capitals as well as small caps character sets...and so Klutz Pro was born. The letterforms started with a few letters my daughter had drawn which I expanded on from there. Pulling from inspirations in retro cartoon titling and modern hand lettering playfulness, the full font was born, with weights and width to follow. Quirky, eclectic, and just a bit ridiculous, it lends itself to a range of design typesetting - although I must confess, even though it all began with the Regular width, the Extra Condensed styles are my personal favorites. What's your favorite?

Kobely is a reproduction of a local broadcaster's real handwriting. My daughter thought her boss's handwriting was so neat and uniform, it would make a great font and asked if I would be willing to create it. I agreed. She had him write out all the basic characters, which he gladly did with both a standard ink pen and a Sharpie¨ marker. I then turned it into a three weight family, perfect for use on post-it notes, shopping and to-do lists - anywhere you need the natural feel of real handwriting. I created it in various weights to spare you from adding a stroke to make it bolder. Adding a stroke can often compromise the small details of a font. Kobely is designed to be readable in even the boldest weight!

Houschka Rounded Alt is a carbon copy of the Houschka Rounded family with one key difference: the rounded signature glyphs A & W on the default positions swap places with their straight alternates. Houschka was named after Georg Houschka, a sadly defunct confectioner’s shop in Salzburg, Austria, which had a wonderful 1930s frontage and distinctively rounded letterforms in the sign above the door. OpenType features include CE, Baltic, Turkish & Cyrillic language support plus small caps, 3 stylistic sets, contextual alternates, ligatures and 4 sets of numerals. Houschka Rounded Alt is a clean and legible modern sans serif typeface which shares the humanist qualities of Gill Sans and Johnston but retains a uniquely charming character of its own. The monolinear structure, rounded terminals and rolling curves give Houschka Rounded Alt a soft and friendly appearance.

Khazar, member of a confederation of Turkic-speaking tribes that in the late 6th century CE established a major commercial empire covering the southeastern section of modern European Russia. Although the origin of the term Khazar and the early history of the Khazar people are obscure, it is fairly certain that the Khazars were originally located in the northern Caucasus region and were part of the western Turkic empire (in Turkistan). The Khazars were in contact with the Persians in the mid-6th century CE, and they aided the Byzantine emperor Heraclius (reigned 610–641) in his campaign against the Persians. Although the Khazar Empire had a secular administrative structure, the administrative staff chose the Jewish religion. The Khazars are the only Turkish state that converted to Judaism.

Du is a self hommage to Uncertain Felttip. Uncertain, made in 2008, is a typeface which reproduced faithfully the style in which I am writing on copy paper, usually using the felt-tip pen. This time, I wrote the new family by the same method but using the tablet PC and the touch pen. Although, as for some characters, Uncertain differs in a form, it is the result of reflecting my hand writing. I wrote all the characters. If it is original, all the characters diverted and composed, for example, characters, such as Aacute and Agrave, are written. Different specification from Uncertain is family composition. Although Uncertain had only 3 weight, 7 weight were designed for Du. This way a user can choose his favorite weight because the variation of weights increased.

Acris Serif is the rich and gracefull font designed in two weights for expressive and luxury projects. If it's had gender, it would be a woman — beautiful but with character like rose with thorns. Acris Serif is very good looking in Big Tittles, Magazine design, Branding, Logotypes, Posters, Wedding invitations, romantic cards and others. This typeface comes with special features like Stylistic Alternates and Discretionary Ligatures. The easiest way you can get Alternates is to add for example number 2, 3 or 4 after character. For this option be sure that bottom named Standard Ligatures is activated in Opentype panel. Multilingual Support Acris support Western European characters and works with following languages: English, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Irish, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish.

Franko Luin, Odense's designer, on this typeface: With Odense I entered the field where Optima reigns in royal majesty. The first question I received was, in fact, why I designed another Optima. Look closely: Odense has as much in common with Optima as Garamond with Baskerville. Am I right? Odense Neon is a special variant that can be used for logos or single words. I had the idea for it when I noticed that the neon tubes in a sign over a store only partially followed the characters. The name comes from the Danish town Odense, the town of the famous storyteller Hans Christian Andersen, author of, e.g., 'The Little Mermaid.' Odense is also the place where the first book in the Nordic countries was printed, the 'Breviarium Ottoniense', in 1482.

What does a 1932 movie about a love affair between a circus' trapeze artist and a sideshow "little person" have to do with the 1960s counter-culture? They both share some commonalities. The title card for Tod Browning's "Freaks" inspired the lettering design for Hippie Freak JNL. It's in a retro style that was embraced by the youth movement that had its epicenter in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Circus performers with birth defect abnormalities were displayed in what was referred to as "freak shows"; while young men with long hair and beards who sought peace, love and an end to the war in Vietnam were commonly referred to as "hippie freaks". As the saying goes "the more things change, the more they stay the same".

Moron is a distinctive and idiosyncratic display typeface: a winsome-but-nasty, old-and-yet-new drawing of Victorian sans-serif letterforms (with some 1970s sausage fonts thrown in). Moron started life as a sans-serif redrawing of Nylon but developed into a unique typeface with a character all its own. It is based, very loosely, upon Victorian Tuscan and Grotesque type found in the churches and cemeteries of the city of Glasgow. These letterforms originated before the dawn of modernism and at a time when the Arts and Crafts Movement was flourishing. In this age of early mass production and mechanisation, the Victorian ability to balance functionality with ornamentation had fascinating results. The typography of that period displays a unique combination of industrial heft and romantic decoration.

Cake Shop has a lengthy history. Originally designed during the Eighties by Aussie artist David Art Wales, the font was inspired by the awkward but charming hand-lettered signs in a Maltese cake shop near his Sydney home. "These signs were hand-drawn by someone who clearly had no experience but who'd really put their heart and soul into the job. There was a real sincerity to the characters that I wanted to capture." For a brief time during the early Nineties, MTV used Cake Shop for all their on-air interstitials. Since then, it's become a go-to font for everything from children's books to album covers and ice cream branding. In a recent update, Wales added airier spacing to more closely resemble the original signs the font was based on.

The Cholla typeface family was designed by Sibylle Hagmann in 1998-99 and named after a species of cactus she encountered in the Mojave Desert. Cholla was originally developed for the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. There, art director Denise Gonzales Crisp and associate designer, Carla Figueroa, collaborated with Hagmann to create a series of fonts that would offer a great deal of variation. The variety was needed to echo the school's nine different departments, yet together the fonts had to exude a unified feel. It was first used in the radically designed 1999/2000 Art Center catalog which won a honorable mention in I.D. magazine and was featured in Eye No. 31. Originally Hagmann set out to design a typeface that, as she recalls, "I could feel comfortable making, first of all, and one that would serve a purpose and had a clear idea behind it, and something that I would want to use myself." Stylistically Hagmann set out to create "12 cuts with slightly different personalities, with different ideas applied. For example the bold weight isn't simply the Regular with weight gain, but has bold letterforms with their own peculiar details. What all weights share and what is the necessary unifying detail is the tapered curve - marked out, for example, in the lowercase b's left top and bottom of the bowl." Gonzales adds: "The forms seemed classical as well. This combination could have a long life, and be timely. I also saw - at least in the beginnings of Cholla - forms that connoted hybrid, of inter-connection, of human and machine growing together. These notions seem appropriate for a school that teaches design and art." Greek version by Panos Haratzopoulos.

It was expected that Joluvian’s third type font would be inspired by the city where he currently resides: Madrid, Spain. His previous creations had originated in Venezuela (Zulia) and The Philippines (Salamat), both, places where he had once lived. Joluvian believes “now is the time to pay tribute and show gratitude towards a city that has bestowed me with so many fortunes.” He considers that Madrid’s people, streets, scents, flavor and sounds are gift enough to awaken the creative urgency in any artist. This time around, it is being expressed through the crafts of the Typographic industry. Since his arrival in Spain, Joluvian has been attached to the city’s central area, specifically to the renowned Atocha Street and its railroad station. It was precisely on that street that Joluvian and Mauco Sosa, his friend and partner, decided to establish the Patera Studio: a charming creative space that birthed the concept for this new font which they proudly named Atocha Script. The artists where still in the final phases of their previous script, Salamat, when the idea for Atocha came about. This dynamic is actually very typical of the artistic process, in which every finished product spawns the need to create its next level offspring. “Working on Atocha and Atocha Caps has been a very pleasant journey. We have given our best efforts, for we wanted to offer a typeface that was both versatile and user-friendly on a number of applications, showing a wide scope of alternatives in our glyphs,” says the artist. The illustrations were created by Mauco, to ensure visual integration that would showcase the work of both members of the Patera Studio and their complementing aesthetic voices.  Atocha, as Salamat and Zulia before, was digitized by Alejandro Paul.

Pseudonym is a low-contrast, subtly-flared serif available in four weights across three styles in both roman and italic. As with all of my typeface designs, I am creating fonts that I would use myself for branding purposes—typefaces with style and purpose that are intended for use in creating logos and distinctive branding typography. I wanted to create a typeface that had incisive flared serifs combined with the strength and solidity of modern grotesque faces. The result is Pseudonym, which I feel has great presence, style and legibility. Although I must admit, I had to tone down the flared serifs during the design process in order to achieve that :) I’m sure you will have great fun playing with some of the Open Type features that I’ve added to Pseudonym. There’s a full set of true small caps with their corresponding diacritics and figures. There are also a number of discretionary ligatures, these are chosen from the glyphs palette in your layout app to replace pairs of standard characters. You’ll also enjoy making use of the catchwords – these have been created to harmonise with each style, again, giving you more flexibility and scope to create some innovative typography. Finally, there are some alternate characters for /C/D/O/. You may wish to use these when creating logos that include standard contractions for limited, number, incorporated, etc. Key features: • Pseudonym is a low-contrast, subtly-flared serif that has great presence, style and legibility • 3 styles – Narrow, Regular and Wide • 4 weights in roman and italic: • Light | Regular | Medium | Bold • Full set of small caps with diacritics and figures • 30+ discretionary ligatures, catchwords and alternate characters • Full European character set • 600 glyphs per font

Gaslon is a slight reinterpretation and major expansion of a 1973 film type called Corvina Black, originally designed for VGC by A. Bihari. While the original typeface was popular in its own right, there were some things in it that were too quirky to work in the display applications it was intended for. Some of the letter combinations just didn't work to their visual optimum. For example the a and o were too similar, ditto the C and G, the E, F and J were too overwhelming to be set properly within certain display uses. Gaslon eliminates these problems by the inclusion of plenty of alternates for the vast majority of the original letters. In fact, the original a is itself now an alternate to a gorgeous new one. The Gaslon Alt font includes tremendous possibilities for both unicase use, and proper use in conjunction with the main font. This is our true homage to a typeface that had great potential more than three decades ago, but was overlooked by digitizers because of a few quirks it had in film type contexts. Full of curves and invitation, Gaslon ranks very high among the friendliest poster faces ever made. It is ideal for friendly store signs, children book covers, and plenty of other applications. In fact, if you're planning on contributing to a few protests around your neighborhood or city, you would probably be better off using Gaslon to help your sign/placard carry words and slogans that are big but friendly. Nothing beats "DOWN WITH GAS PRICES" set in a nice imaginative mix of the many Gaslon letters. The OpenType version of Gaslon is a single font that contains all the alternates and niceties programmed within features accessible by OT-friendly programs.

The Bauer Typefoundry first released the Beton family of types in 1936. Created by the German type designer Heinrich Jost, the present digital version of the Beton family consists of six slab serif typefaces. First developed during the early 1800s, by the 1930s slab serif faces had become one of many stock styles of type developed by foundries all over the world. Because of their distance from pen-drawn forms and their industrial appearance, they were seen as “modern” typefaces. (Their serifs kept them from being too modern.) The first slab serif typefaces were outgrowths of didone style text faces (e.g., Walbaum). As newspapers and advertising grew in importance in the western world (especially in “Wild West” America), type founders and printers began to create bigger, bolder typefaces, which would set large headlines apart from text, and each other. Through display tactics, businesses and industry could begin to visually differentiate their products from one another. This craze eventually led to the development of monster sized wood type, among other things. By the 20th Century, the typographic establishment had begun to tame, categorize, and codify 19th Century type styles. It was in the wake of this environment that Jost developed Beton. The Beton family is a type “family” in a pre-1950s sense of the word. Although six styles of type are available, only four of them fit in logical progression with each other (Beton Light, Beton Demi Bold, Beton Bold, and Beton Extra Bold). The other two members of the family, Beton Bold Condensed and Beton Bold Compressed, are more like distant cousins. They function better as single headlines to text set in Beton Light or Beton Demi Bold, of as companions to totally separate typefaces.

The idea of a brand-new grotesk is certainly rather foolish – there are already lots of these typefaces in the world and, quite simply, nothing is more beautiful than the original Gill. The sans-serif chapter of typography is now closed by hundreds of technically perfect imitations of Syntax and Frutiger, which are, however, for the most part based on the cool din-aesthetics. The only chance, when looking for inspiration, is to go very far... A grotesk does not afford such a variety as a serif typeface, it is dull and can soon tire the eye. This is why books are not set in sans serif faces. A grotesk is, however, always welcome for expressing different degrees of emphasis, for headings, marginal notes, captions, registers, in short for any service accompaniment of a book, including its titlings. We also often come across a text in which we want to distinguish the individual speaking or writing persons by the use of different typefaces. The condition is that such grotesk should blend in perfectly with the proportions, colour and above all with the expression of the basic, serif typeface. In the area of non-fiction typography, what we appreciate in sans-serif typefaces is that they are clamorous in inscriptions and economic in the setting. John Sans is to be a modest servant and at the same time an original loudspeaker; it wishes to inhabit libraries of educated persons and to shout from billboards. A year ago we completed the transcription of the typefaces of John Baskerville, whose heritage still stands out vividly in our memory. Baskerville cleverly incorporated certain constructional elements in the design of the individual letters of his typeface. These elements include above all the alternation of softand sharp stroke endings. The frequency of these endings in the text and their rhythm produce a balanced impression. The anchoring of the letters on the surface varies and they do not look monotonous when they are read. We attempted to use these tricks also in the creation of a sans-serif typeface. Except that, if we wished to create a genuine “Baroque grotesk”, all the decorativeness of the original would have to be repeated, which would result in a parody. On the contrary, to achieve a mere contrast with the soft Baskerville it is sufficient to choose any other hard grotesk and not to take a great deal of time over designing a new one. Between these two extremes, we chose a path starting with the construction of an almost monolinear skeleton, to which the elements of Baskerville were carefully attached. After many tests of the text, however, some of the flourishes had to be removed again. Anything that is superfluous or ornamental is against the substance of a grotesk typeface. The monolinear character can be impinged upon in those places where any consistency would become a burden. The fine shading and softening is for the benefit of both legibility and aesthetics. The more marked incisions of all crotches are a characteristic feature of this typeface, especially in the bold designs. The colour of the Text, Medium and Bold designs is commensurate with their serif counterparts. The White and X-Black designs already exceed the framework of book graphics and are suitable for use in advertisements and magazines. The original concept of the italics copying faithfully Baskerville’s morphology turned out to be a blind alley. This design would restrict the independent use of the grotesk typeface. We, therefore, began to model the new italics only after the completion of the upright designs. The features which these new italics and Baskerville have in common are the angle of the slope and the softened sloped strokes of the lower case letters. There are also certain reminiscences in the details (K, k). More complicated are the signs & and @, in the case of which regard is paid to distinguishing, in the design, the upright, sloped @ small caps forms. The one-storey lower-case g and the absence of a descender in the lower-case f contributes to the open and simple expression of the design. Also the inclusion of non-aligning figures in the basic designs and of aligning figures in small caps serves the purpose of harmonization of the sans-serif families with the serif families. Non-aligning figures link up better with lower-case letters in the text. If John Sans looks like many other modern typefaces, it is just as well. It certainly is not to the detriment of a Latin typeface as a means of communication, if different typographers in different places of the world arrive in different ways at a similar result.

Multicolored Fonts Many years ago, when Xerox Corporation still had its own font department, I came to Los Angeles in 1985 to train the IKARUS program. One day Bill Kienzel, head of the Xerox font department at the time, said we should go to the Hollywood Hills together; he knew people there who were experimenting with multicolored fonts. After a little wandering through the winding streets of the many hills, we reached a somewhat overgrown, simple family house standing under trees. A group of very inspired designers were waiting for us there. They immediately showed us the works they created using photomechanical tricks. They were fascinating. The American colors and the whole look seemed noble and enchanting. The problem was that this process was very difficult to implement and required a lot of effort on individual letters. They dreamed of a colored font that could be used for normal typesetting. We thought back and forth about how to save the individually colored letters in a common font, but soon gave up because we didn't see a technical option. So this idea and the memory of the time in Hollywood lay dormant in the back of my mind for many years, until at the beginning of this year 2023 I received an order to produce an outline typeface and the story came back to me. Suddenly I knew how to solve the problem from back then: if only the areas that should have the same color in all letters were saved in their own separate fonts, they could be colored independently of each other and later placed on top of each other. I implemented this in the 5 fonts that are now available with the 3 variants “Outside”, “Middle” and “Inside”. Together with the background, 4 colors can be combined with each other. This method works in text programs such as Word or InDesign. In Photoshop or Illustrator, the individual surfaces can also be colored by converting them into paths if the additional “Complete” variants (which contain all 3 contours) are used. There is also a “Basic” variant that can be used to achieve special effects such as overlay, bleed, etc. The first 5 fonts in this series are all based on the principle of contouring. Anyone who claims that you don't need any special fonts because they can be created automatically from any font using common programs is wrong or is only telling only half the truth. Anyone who has ever dealt with this knows that many individual adjustments to the design are necessary after contouring. This has happened in the 5 fonts that are now available and have very different styles. The dream from back then has come true. The user can set any text, long or short, in multiple colors, freely design the color scheme and apply all the usual typographic settings. Volker Schnebel, November 2023