The classic modernist FS Alvar grew out of a library of pure modular shapes gathered by Fontsmith’s master of the abstract starting point, Mr Phil Garnham. “It was a collection that just had to be explored and brought to life in a typographic voice. “We debated long and hard about this. It was big decision to make a shift away from the typefaces that people knew us for. And we didn’t want to compromise our reputation of well crafted typographic quality”. Modular forms A headline font that’s both graphic and functional, in the modernist tradition, FS Alvar focused Fontsmith’s eyes on the bigger issue of what makes a font show its age. “Looking at those fonts from the 1980s that were supposed to represent the ‘future’,” says Phil, “they looked so dated now. With Alvar, we weren’t concerned with creating future-thinking typography but with exploring form for form’s sake, and how that can evolve to create letterforms. Modular forms with a typographic eye.” Stencilled The concept for Alvar first materialised back in 2001 with some sketches Phil made while still at Middlesex University. Eight years later, something made him dig them out again. “There was something really nice about the proportions of that first design. Working on it again, I thought about it properly, but it still needed something to give it that edge. “Jason stood up in the studio and supplied the missing link: ‘Why don’t we make it stencilled?’ He didn’t mean in an obvious way, but by building a kind of architectural stencil into the form. It worked and the idea of using an architect’s name (Alvar Aalto) to describe the font felt perfect.” Featured in... The three weights of FS Alvar are made for standout headlines in advertising campaigns and magazines. Alvar has had a starring role in campaigns for brands from Nike to Amnesty International, as well as on CD covers, record labels and packaging.

THE SPARK Uniform started as a spark of inspiration one day while I was shopping at the store. I was looking at some typography on a can of dog food and the idea popped into my head, “What if there was a geometric typeface with a circular O that when condensed, the O became straight sided, instead of becoming an oval?” I quickly sketched out the concept of Uniform and liked what I saw, the only problem was I was working full time as a graphic designer, and as a newly married husband, I didn’t have any time to make the extensive typeface. LETDOWN A year and a half later, shortly after the birth of my first child, my boss cut my hours in half. Although stressful, I saw this event as an opportunity to finally have time to complete the typeface I had in my head. I spent a couple months putting together a Kickstarter campaign, thinking it would be a smashing success, and I would be able to live off the donations long enough to complete the typeface. Wrong! The campaign was a flop and I was left discouraged and dejected, thinking that the great idea I had in my head would never become a reality... PERSEVERANCE At the end of the year, in December 2013, I decided to go for it and make this new type family no matter what it took. I began waking up a few hours before work each morning (getting only four hours of sleep each night) carefully crafting each individual glyph day by day. After nine months of hard work (and just about killing myself in the process!) in October 2014, I finally had a finished product ready to be released to the public! THE PINNACLE Fast forward a few years and now Uniform has reached it's pinnacle, Uniform Pro. Uniform Pro now offers extended language support including Cyrillic and Greek character sets, integrated italic styles, additional weights, and additional OpenType features.

This is what you get when you mix monoline rounded letters with some bracketed serifs and finish it off with a sprinkle of ornamental appendages. The result is very readable, rather original and quite charming. I have fixed some inconsistencies in serif designs across the weights, cleaned up the serif connections - and added a fourth weight. But I have kept all the wonky curves and slightly differing stroke thicknesses, as they are so integral to the charm. Kevin King says: "I guess all type designers at some point think 'Well, I'll just have a go at a standard text face...' There is a long story here somewhere, suffice it to say that I started with the thinnest version - typical. I wanted to make a standard serif text face - until I saw it in print and thought "Yuk! it looks like everything else!" - still does really but with twiddles and pooneys..." If you find the "twiddles & pooneys" too much you can tone them down with the OpenType Stylistic Alternate feature (which will make sure they don't appear on three consecutive letters) or remove them completely with the OpenType Swash feature. ALL fonts from CheapProFonts have very extensive language support: They contain some unusual diacritic letters (some of which are contained in the Latin Extended-B Unicode block) supporting: Cornish, Filipino (Tagalog), Guarani, Luxembourgian, Malagasy, Romanian, Ulithian and Welsh. They also contain all glyphs in the Latin Extended-A Unicode block (which among others cover the Central European and Baltic areas) supporting: Afrikaans, Belarusian (Lacinka), Bosnian, Catalan, Chichewa, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Esperanto, Greenlandic, Hungarian, Kashubian, Kurdish (Kurmanji), Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Maori, Polish, Saami (Inari), Saami (North), Serbian (latin), Slovak(ian), Slovene, Sorbian (Lower), Sorbian (Upper), Turkish and Turkmen. And they of course contain all the usual "western" glyphs supporting: Albanian, Basque, Breton, Chamorro, Danish, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Frisian, Galican, German, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish (Gaelic), Italian, Northern Sotho, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romance, Sami (Lule), Sami (South), Scots (Gaelic), Spanish, Swedish, Tswana, Walloon and Yapese.

A classic “American” sans serif with a kink Desphalia belongs to the kind of sans serif fonts that were created in the 19th century. You could also name it “American Gothic”, a sans serif in the style of fonts like Franklin Gothic, News Gothic and similar. Above all, the high x-height characterizes this typeface style, as do the identical heights of uppercase and ascenders. However, I allowed myself a few peculiarities ;-) On the one hand, there is the gently sloping horizontal middle line on letters such as H, E, F, A and e. The M also got gently slanted sides. Some of the lower-case letters have an up- or down-stroke: a d m n p u. This "kink" on the shaft also serves to better distinguish the small l from the capital I — as can be seen clearly with the term »Illinois«. In keeping with the tradition of American typefaces, Desphalia does not have a true italic. Rather, the letters of the “Italic” have the same character forms as the normal upright variant, but in oblique — and so it is not called “Italic” but “Oblique”. Style Set 01: Another American peculiarity is the capital I with dashes above and below. It is included in the Desphalia as an alternate character form. An alternative small l with the “kink” in the ascender is also included — as is a y with the “kink” in the descender. Style Set 02: The corresponding “straight” forms a d l m n p u without the break are included as alternatives in a separate style set. Small caps are uppercase letters that are optically the same size as lowercase letters. They offer a very classy way of emphasis. Desphalia is available in the widths Condensed, Normal and Expanded, the weights include Thin, Light, Book, Bold, Black. Using the variable font, all intermediate levels can be freely selected. The figures are optionally available as tabular figures, proportional lining figures or old style figures.

Matthew Carter has been refining his design for Alisal for so long, he says, that when he was asked to complete the design for the Monotype Library, it was almost as if he were doing a historical revival of his own typeface. The illusion even extended to changes in his work process: although he now does all his preliminary and final drawing on screen, the first trial renderings of Alisal were done as pencil renderings. Alisal is best classified as an Italian old style design. Originally created between the late 15th and mid-16th centuries in northern Italy, the true Italian old styles were some of the first roman types. They tend to be the most calligraphic of serifed faces, with the axis of their curved strokes inclined to the left, as if drawn with a flat-tipped pen or brush. These designs offer sturdy, free-flowing and heavily bracketed serifs, short descenders, and a modest contrast in stroke weight. Alisal has nearly all the classic Italian old style character traits, plus a few quirks of its own. It is calligraphic in nature, with more of a pen-drawn quality than faces like Palatino or Goudy Old Style. It is more rough-hewn than either Goudy's Kennerley or Benton's Cloister, and is generally heavier in weight than most of the other Italian old style designs. One place where Alisal makes a clean break with traditional old style designs is in the serifs. While sturdy and clearly reflecting pen-drawn strokes, Alisal's serifs have no bracketing and appear to be straight strokes crossing the main vertical. Like Caslon or Trajanus, Alisal is a handsome design when viewed as a block of copy. Ascenders are tall and elegant, and serve as a counterpoint to the robust strength of the rest of the design. Alisal is available as a small family of roman and bold with a complementary italic for the basic roman weight, providing all that is needed for the majority of text typography. Alisal is not as well-known as some of Carter's other typefaces, but this lovely and long-incubated design was certainly worth the wait.