THE NORWEGIAN RUNES The oldest runes discovered in Norway date from 400 AD. They were based upon the 24 - rune Elder Futhark of Germanic origin. Two of the runes in the Elder Futhark, Pertra and Eoh, have never been found in any Norwegian rune text. From 550 AD to 700 AD there was a transition period between the older 24-rune Futhark and the newer 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. Then, about 900 AD, the Shorttwiggs-runes were introduced from Sweden. Shortly thereafter, from 1000 AD, Futharks with more than 16 runes became more prevalent, as these were more consistent with the Latin alphabet. These types of runes were used in Norway up to 1800 AD.

Gutter Pigeon is not your every-day Ransom-kind-of-font! The prices of making it was really simple: I only used my phone and computer. I took pictures of letter from newspapers, magazines, bookcovers, candybars, movieposters, roadsigns, etc. In the beginning, It was easy to find new letters. But as I had the initial letters, it became quite a search for the missing letters. Not a hard job, you may think - but this font has 8 different versions of each letter! That's 26 lowercase glyphs and 26 uppercase glyphs...8 times! That's more than 400 glyphs! And on top of that comes numbers and punctuation! Go crazy with Gutter Pigeon! Actually, that is not very hard, because the font automatically cycles through the 8 different versions of each letter while you type! Upper- and lowercase in a wild mix!

The typefaces Largo Mager (Light) and Largo Halbfett (Medium) were cast for the first time in 1937 by Ludwig & Mayer based on the designs by Hans Wagner. One weight Largo Licht (Outline) was added in 1956. All fonts were only configured with capitals. The digital version of Largo has pointed serifs and not the slightly rounded ones seen in the hot metal versions which gives the typeface a more elegant note. Largo is often used for fine printing jobs as business cards or formal invitations, or in the fashion and cosmetics fields. Hans Wagner was born in Munich in 1894 and died in 1977 in Altenburg where he had worked as a painter, graphic designer and book designer. In addition to the Largo typeface, he developed, among others, the Altenburger Gotisch (1928), the Welt-Antiqua (1931-1934) and the Wolfram (1930).

Trolls are lurking under each and every river crossing. The earth is shaking as Ogres stomp across the land, spiked clubs in hand. Swordsmen and Sorcerers are waging war on one another even as the pure and young and stout of heart search for the talisman which will restore harmony once more. Are you under the spell of some wizard's magickal incantation or are you just looking for exactly the right typestyle for your J.R.R. Tolkien Convention newsletter? Regardless, an ancient curse has been lifted and the Talmudic Legend of the Clay Beast they call GOLEM has been restored to his former majesty. The shapeless mass is no longer one of unfinished substance, no longer a body without a soul. The Homunculus that was once Comicraft's Golem has had a spiritual awakening and is now available with the crinkly bits smoothed off.

Pantoufle is French for slipper. Not the flipflop variety (or thongs if you’re from Australia), but the one you wear indoors when it’s cold. I have some too; Spanish ones, made from recycled PET bottles. Here in Holland, we call them ‘Pantoffels’ and you don’t have to be a language expert to see the resemblance between the French and the Dutch word. That is because the French are probably more savvy when it comes to keeping your feet warm and the Dutch just borrowed the word, pronunciation and all! Pantoufle is a font I made with a big fat marker pen. My kids had used it to decorate some gifts for Sinterklaas (if you want to know what Sinterklaas is, look it up). Pantoufle comes with extensive language support and a full set of alternates for the lower case glyphs. Enjoy!

Wakandan is an alphabet designed by Hannah Beachler, and used in the 2018 film Black Panther. It is based on Nsibidi symbols. In the film it is used to transliterate English text in the credits and other on-screen text. Another script used in the film was developed by Oluwaseun Osewa and inspired by Nsibidi, a system of symbols used in southeastern Nigeria between about 400 and 1400 AD. In addition, the symbols of several different ancient languages ​​were also used for the alphabet. Like Old North Arabia, Old Tifinagh. I did not draw for this font, except for a few letters. I transferred the sound values ​​from the ancient writing languages ​​fonts that I had made before to the Wakanda font, so I did not take much time, I finished it in 4-5 hours.

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. Morris F. Benton’s Garamond appeared in 1936 and is based on the forms of Jean Jannon, which already displayed characteristics of the Transitional style.

Lately I have been experimenting with different foods. At home, we eat a lot of Asian food, but I thought it would be nice to broaden my culinary horizon a bit. So far I have (successfully) added Georgian beef and walnut soup, Tacos (after a suggestion by my friend Stuart), Surinam Roti and various vegetarian dishes to our menu. When I created this font, I had to think of Gumbo - a dish I have never made. Gumbo is a handmade display font that comes in a rotund regular and an obese bold (with Italics). Use it for your book covers, product packaging and sticky notes. Gumbo comes with cute ‘end of word’ ligatures - just type the glyph + space and presto: you have a little swash. As for the dish Gumbo, well, I will make that this weekend!

The initial idea for the Oops font, was to create graphemes, and by using them it could imitate a mark of a spilled liquid-stain. In an attempt to make the most convincing effect, those graphemes were written on glass. The final appearance of the graphemes, mostly remain in their basic form, and have the characteristic of a liquid, like fluidity in motion. This manuscript is expressive, but that does not affect the readability of the letters. The generated font was created by using Photoshop, Illustrator and a little bit of interventions in Font Lab. Font Oops is updated and edited version of an old version of the Art decor font, which had just basic letters. Today, Oops font contains Latin and Cyrillic letters, and it can be ideal for use in subjects like a paintball, art, expression, ink, water...

Kevin Simpson was five years old when the stylized "E" of the Electrolux vacuum cleaner logo caught his eye. This is his earliest recollection of an interest that ultimately became an obsession. Type remains his major preoccupation, and he admits to attempting to work a good typeface design into any project where he can get away with it. Aitos was inspired by a metal sculpture Simpson saw while driving through the French countryside. "The statue was very strong. It was heavily weathered and had obviously been there for some time, yet it also seemed very delicate and light." Aitos, like the statue, is a rugged design. At first glance, it is chunky and bold, perhaps a little jarring. If you look again, however, you'll see it has refined qualities. Aitos commands attention - yet is still affable.

Messenger is a redux of two mid-1970s Markus Low designs: Markus Roman, an upright calligraphic face, and Ingrid, a popular typositor-era script. Through the original film faces were a couple of years apart and carried different names, they essentially had the same kind of Roman/Italic relationship two members of the same typeface family would have. The forms of both faces were reworked and updated to fit in the Ingrid mold, which is the truer-to-calligraphy one. The Messenger package is comprised of two interchangeable fonts that support Western, Eastern and Central European languages, as well as Baltic, Celtic/Welsh and Esperanto. Messenger Pro is a single OpenType font that contains the characters of both Messenger and Messenger Alt, linked by programmed features for stylistic alternates, automatic f-ligatures and class-based kerning.

Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar had an exotic name for a historic Texan, but he left his mark beginning in 1836, the year of Texas independence and the first year that pioneers other than mountain men made their way West. Lamar went on to become the young republic’s first elected vice-president (to President Houston) and second president -- and to author a number of interesting letters in his elegant, stylish hand. (Mirabeau B. Lamar grew up a well-to-do southerner from Georgia, and his penmanship shows it.) One of the most interesting aspects of designing old handwriting fonts, to me, is pausing to reflect on the actual moment that the letter-writer is sitting at his or her desk or table, pen in hand, putting thoughts to words -- 150 to 200 years ago. Has a complete character set, and plenty more.

The British Vogue commissioned this typeface for their magazine re-design in 2001. After studying the originals of Morris Fuller Benton and the existing versions, this font was designed with all new thin weights. Just when the family was finished, Vogue informed that they had decided to use American Typewriter instead. Bastards. But here is a true classic typeface with a facelift. The pun intended. Tee Franklin has seven weights with obliques, the Heavy being just slightly heavier than the existing versions from Adobe and ITC, and moving down to totally new Ultra Light, using Luc(as) de Groot's formula to keep the weights optically correct. The glyphs are the same as the Morris Fuller Benton's original from 1902, except for the upper case Q, which was re-designed with a loop in the counter for added differentiation.

I was in a bit of a gloomy mood just before I created this font. I had no inspiration whatsoever (which always affects me in a bad way). I was trying to create a font using broken satay skewers, as using those gives the letters a unique look. I broke about 25 skewers and they all broke ‘the wrong way’. Yes, it’s pathetic, I know, but that’s how it is. I decided to go to the gym and do a little workout, hoping my dark mood would pass. When I came back, I broke one more skewer and lo and behold, it broke exactly the right way! I made this font in one go, using that fantastic skewer and lots of Chinese ink. Darkness Rising comes with all the diacritics you’ll need, plus double letter ligatures and some cool underlined alternates.

Poliphilus is a facsimile of the text of the 'Hypnerotomachia Poliphili', after which it is named, published by Aldus Manutius in Venice in 1499, using a type that had been cut by Francesco Griffo. As a design, Poliphilus is related to Bembo, but whereas Bembo was redrawn, with the intention of making a new face based on an old design, Poliphilus is an exact copy of fifteenth century printing on hand made paper. So exact in fact that even the original ink spread is reproduced. This may not seem like a very sound idea for a typeface, but the letterforms are good and the design is functionally successful. Blado, the italic for use with Poliphilus, was used by Antonio Blado in 1539, and designed by the calligrapher Ludovico degli Arrighi. The Poliphilus type is used mainly for book and text work."

Stonetype is a typeface that was used by stonemasons in the 70s & 80s of the last century. When I was starting as a stonemason, these were the first characters I had to draw, by hand, back then on grave monuments and memorial plaques. The idea was born to digitize all the material, to be saved for eternity. By digitizing all and fine tuning, plus the addition of some main characters, Stonetype has now grown into a user-friendly typeface that can, now still, be used by stonemasons, to improve their creation process times. But Stonetype can also easily be used in modern and contemporary designs. Stonetype is the perfect fit for graphic design, editorial design, magazines, posters, logotypes, brands and corporate design. Stonetype is designed by Coert De Decker in 2019 and published by Kustomtype Font Foundry.

Ceres is has its roots in Cyan, our other font family. Like Cyan, Ceres has a complementary lowercase that provides more versatility than a classic Roman. It is arguably more elegant than Cyan with its accentuated serifs. The lowercase "e" and "g" give Ceres a distinct calligraphic personality. Ceres, the font, derived its name from Ceres the Roman goddess. In Roman mythology, Ceres is the goddess of growing plants (particularly cereals) and of motherly love. Ceres was usually equated with the Greek goddess Demeter. Ceres was the daughter of Saturn and Ops, wife-sister of Jupiter, mother of Proserpina by Jupiter and sister of Juno, Vesta, Neptune and Pluto. Ceres made up a trinity with Liber and Libera, who were two other agricultural gods. She also had twelve minor gods who assisted her, and they were in charge of specific aspects of farming.

A Geometric Angular Sans & Italic with Pizazz The Huerto Family began as a digitization of a film typeface from LetterGraphics known simply as "Horino Bold". The original specimen included standard Capitals and Lowercase, Numerals and limited punctuation. We've fleshed out the original style and added a true italic with swash alternates to the family. Where the original had a feeling of rugged permanence to it, the italic with swashes adds a fleeting dynamic appeal. Opentype features include: - Full set of Inferiors and Superiors for limitless fractions. - A small collection of Standard Ligatures. - A small set of Stylistic Alternates - Swash Capitals for the Italic style only. Approx. 423 Character Glyph Set: Each style of Huerto comes with a glyphset that includes standard & punctuation, international language support, and additional features. Huerto Italic has a 565 character glyphset due to additional swash and alternates.

In the beginning of the 800s, during the reign of Carolus Magnus (or “Karolus”, as he signed himself), a great reformation of the written characters was conducted under the authority of Alcuin, Paul Diacre and Theodulfe. The new style, named “Caroline” script, was completely set up between 820 to 830. It was a regular script, with few ligatures, very legible, but only with lowercase. The capitals remained the old Romans ones. We have created the font to serve contemporary users, making a difference between U and V, and also between I and J, which had no relevance for ancient Latin scribes. We also added Thorn, Oslash, Lslash, W, and and the usual accented characters that did not exist at the time. Titlings (initial letters, without accents), historical and contextual alternates completes the set (in two separate files for MacOS9).

Vagebond is a monoline family in three widths, Condensed (C), Normal (N), and Extended (XT). With Vagebond I was inspired by a very old television I once saw on a junkyard. I wanted to create a typeface with round edges that would fit within the 4 x 3 proportion of the screen. It had to be monoline, because that gives it a very simplistic and minimalistic look. Having created the XT width I felt it needed the both complementing widths to make it complete. The Condensed version, for me, is the funky rounded version of the DIN. I love DIN, but it sometimes feels just a bit to ‘normed’ for me. Vagebond C brings in a bit more personality. Although Vagebond looks kinda ‘oldstyle’, it works very well in futuristic designs. It feels best in combination with a super futuristic 3d object.

Several years ago I was asked to do a sign for a rummage sale. To print the words RUMMAGE SALE, I took letters from some of the ornate fonts I was working on at the time. I liked the results, so made them into a font. Fonts from which the letters come include HippityDippity, Tuskcandy, Letunical, OakPark, WyomingStrudel, NeuAltisch, WyomingMacroni, WyomingPastad, and Rundigsburg. The original typeface had two variants of each letter, one on the upper-case keys and the other on the lower-case keys. The name of the original font, RummageSaleOne, acknowledged that a greater selection of letters was desirable but it was only with the upgrade of 2020 that the greater selection was added. The additional variants were added in two ways: as a separate typeface (RummageSale-Two) and also as OpenType stylistic alternatives.

Back in 2017, I was working on a cutout font that I originally wanted to call Scissor Madness. In the end, I named it Cut Along and it was quite a popular font for a while. This week I decided to clean up my fonts folder a bit (as I usually have tons of unfinished fonts lurking in there) and I found a file named Scissor Madness. It was the original try-out for Cut Along. It contained a couple of nice glyphs that I never used, so I started playing around with them and after a day, I had a whole new font! So, in short, Scissor Madness was partly cut out by hand, partly computer made, but it is 100% fun to use! Scissor Madness comes with a bunch of very cute discretionary ligatures.

Remember that kid in your class who always knew the right answer, who always had their hand raised? The first kid to finish the test, the kid who LIKED the pop quiz, the kid who did the homework five seconds after the teacher wrote the assignment on the board and was guaranteed to get an an A+, even though they NEVER studied? THAT kid? Burghal Design has a font that both remembers and salutes that kid, that teacher's pet, that know-it-all: SmartyPants. SmartyPants comes in regular, bold, and because bold just isn't bold enough for SmartyPants, super bold. There's also SmartyPants Doodles, with 90 pictures of SmartyPants stuff (such as a safety pin, a doghouse, an inkwell, and even a couple of cooties), and SmartyPants Snowflakes, with a whopping 182 dingbats to choose from.

Bayer Sans, is based on the typography of the Austrian-born artist Herbert Bayer. Bayer worked as a teacher and graphic designer at the Bauhaus, a revolutionary German art school, during the 20's. His specialty was commercial art and he had many "radical" views on typography and its interaction with society. Bayer felt that written language should be merely a graphic version of spoken language. Thus, he advocated a single alphabet without majuscules and miniscules. Bayer's designs are simple, geometric letterforms that lend themselves to lowercase form. This font, based on the typography of Bayer and his students at the Bauhaus Werkstatt (studio), was digitally modeled by Noah Rothschild. Bayer Sans features a complete character set including European characters, alternate letters with adjusted widths and designs and ligatures. Included are the "f" characters and a special linked double-o.

Sunwind is not really made to write long copy. It is a font for shopsigns and short sentences that need that hot, sunny and windy touch. And that is how I got around to designing it: I saw some letters on a shopsign in Cannes when driving into town. I shouted at my son Julius: "Quick take a picture of that sign, the blue one." That's what he did, only he used the macro setting, so I had a very small sign but lots of nice background. Anyway I got the basic idea! Then I made a lot of sketches and this is what came out. I added a smallcaps set and I also made some initials as a rough version, so they look like written with a brush on heavygrain paper. Swinging that brush is yours truly Gert Wiescher

By chance I stumbled upon an unfinished font in my fonts folder (while looking for something else). It had a stupid working name, but when I opened it, the font looked really nice! I have no idea why I never finished it. I renamed it Ukiyo Mind, because the font looked a bit like Japanese brush strokes. Ukiyo is a Japanese term which roughly translates as ‘the fleeting/transient world’. In mediaval Japan, the word was associated with Buddhism, but later it was used to describe the urban lifestyle and the pleasure seeking aspects of it. Nowadays it refers to a ‘living in the moment’ state of mind. Ukiyo Mind is a really nice brush font, which I probably made using Chinese ink and a brush. It comes with extensive language support and a set of alternates for the lower case glyphs.

Larks' Tongues in Aspic is the fifth studio album (released in 1973) by the English progressive rock group King Crimson. I have always liked this name, as it reminded me of old stories in which witches threw all kinds of weird ingredients (larks’ tongues, bat wings and petrified dragon dung) into a big cauldron. When I created this font, it looked like the writing in an old book of spells, so I just had to call it Larks’ Tongues. Larks’ Tongues is a very lively headline font which would look good on (children’s) book covers, posters and product packaging. So, if you are about to write a book about witches, want to throw a halloween party or want to market your Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, then by all means, use this font! Comes with a magical amount of diacritics.

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. Garamond Classico is based on the forms of Jean Jannon, which already displayed characteristics of the Transitional style.

For decades, cereal companies have included premiums [promotional gifts] inside their packages, printed on the cartons or to send for with a special coupon and redemption instructions. During the 1940s, Pep cereal [a long-discontinued Kellogg's brand] offered a series of water-applied decals within its boxes. Most likely made by the Meyercord Company (one of America's largest transfer decal manufacturers at the time), one decal in particular had an alphabet in gold letters with black outlines. (One can only presume the marketing strategy was to have kids bug their parents to buy more Pep cereal if the child needed more than one letter of the alphabet for his or her initials!) Those decal letters have inspired a digital version as the outline character font Toy Decals JNL, which is available in regular oblique, solid and solid oblique styles.

Architype Crouwel is a collection of typefaces created in collaboration with Wim Crouwel, following his agreement with The Foundry, to recreate his experimental alphabets as digital fonts. Crouwel's most recognized work was for the Van Abbe and Stedelijk museums (1954 –72) where he established his reputation for radical, grid-based design. Stedelijk first appeared in the seminal Vormgevers poster, commissioned by the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam in 1968. Crouwel created a rigid grid system across the poster of 57 vertical by 41 horizontal lines, also forming the basis for the construction of the letterforms. Although all hand drawn, the resulting typeface had a machine-made appearance. This striking black and white poster with its visible grid became one of Crouwel's most iconic designs. Architype Stedelijk now re-creates these letterforms as a single alphabet typeface in a digital font.

Cherubina means ‘Blessed’. It is a name derived from the Akkadian “karabu / kuribu”, meaning “blessing, blessed”. A cherub is a type of spiritual being mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, often depicted as a baby with wings. This font was based on the hand lettering I found on a 1962 Japanese poster for the movie “Mother Joanna Of The Angels”. The poster was designed by Hiroyoshi Oshima. Cherubina font is an all caps font (upper and lower case differ and can be used together) with a medieval feel to it. I tried to keep the ‘spirit’ of Hiroyoshi Oshima’s lettering, but changed the glyphs and designed most of them myself, as I had nothing but the title of the poster to work with. I have added some ligatures as well. Comes with my blessing and an eternity of diacritics.