Who haven't heard the phrase that ‘any past time was better’?. Although I sometimes find this phrase a little too pessimistic (because I try to think that the best is yet to come), it may be true regarding my passion, typography. I'm too young (29) unfortunately, and this means I did not have the pleasure of being contemporary with maybe the man who has influenced my work the most (1). The man that showed that letters are more than just letters to be read. Herb Lubalin (1918-1981), also called sometimes as ‘the rule basher’ (2), smashed the taboos and sacred rules of type design and gave it personality. He rejected the functionalist philosophy of europeans in favor of an eclectic and exuberant style. To him, letters were not merely vessels of form, they were objects of meaning. (3). Nowadays, when looking at his portfolio, who dares to deny that the term ‘typography’ and ‘beauty’ may go hand-in-hand without any problem? Ed Benguiat, one of Herb’s partners, still likes making jokes with the phrase “screw legibility, type should be beautiful” and what I understand of this is not to forget the rules, but to know and break them carefully. In an era of pure eclecticism, we, the lovers of flourishes and swashes, can't do nothing but admire all the legacy that Lubalin, this wonderful type-guru, left. My font Lubaline read as “the line of Lubalin” is my humble tribute to him. Those who know his work, may see the influences easily like in his ‘Beards’ (1976) and ‘The Sound of Music’ (1965) posters; the art-deco forms in many of his amazing logos and practically in all his creations where letters seem to be alive just like you and me. I really hope that the future finds me still learning more and more about type-design and letterforms, and like him, always willing to make innovations in my field: Because letters are not just letters to be read. NOTES (1) These are some of my fonts in which some of Lubalin’s influences can be seen (in order of creation): Reina, Aire, Erotica, String, Beatle, Heroe, Selfie, Model, Seventies, and many others that are still in progress. (2) (3) Steven Heller. Herb Lubalin: Rule Basher. U&lc (1998) http://www.printmag.com/imprint/my-favorite-lubalin/

Arrrrrr! A brand new handwritten brush font for all your pirate treasure maps, mateys. And very usable elsewhere of course.

PixelZoo gathers over 70 animal species turned into pixels. They are wild and domestic animals, mixing mammals, fishes and birds.

Warka typeface is based on sans serif. This display family includes 5 font styles. Combinations may give you impressive effects.

A stylized typeface directly inspired by the movie poster artwork for The Man Who Fell To Earth starring David Bowie.

Bohemio was designed in memory of Gunter Böhmer, an artist famous for his many book covers of the 1950s in Germany. The cover I took as an inspiration for this font is that of a book called Stiller (by Max Frisch). Bohemio sounds similar to "Böhmer" (which means the one from Bohemia) and it is also an alliteration to artisty. I thought "Bohemio" to be a nice name for this very strong, almost expressionist design. Yours very artsy craftsy Gert Wiescher

This seriously styling family of typefaces is based on Dolmen and Zierdolmen, designed by Max Salzmann for the J. G. Schelter & Giesecke foundry of Leipzig in 1922 and 1923. Unlike previous revivals, these fonts remain true to Salzmann’s original designs. The plain version also features all of the standard German ligatures, accessible through the hlig feature, included in the original release. Both versions feature the complete Latin 1252, Central European 1250 and Turkish 1254 character sets, with localization for Lithuanian, Moldovan and Romanian.

EraMax 123 is a multi-layered display geometric sans serif, meant to be set BIG, for large, colourful statements. It's the perfect face for packaging, posters & branding, where a strong, colourful voice is needed... Did I mention posters? The "Max" in EraMax comes from the ultra bold weight, but also, and mainly as a tip of the hat to Peter Max, the designer and artist, known for creating so many images which have come to be emblematic of the sixties and seventies. The bold gradient effects in some of his posters were the inspiration behind the dotted and striped layers. This font's vintage flavour truly stand out in a retro setting, but also has a modern flavour that lends it the flexibility to work well in a more contemporary context. This is the second of what is to be an extended family of typefaces based on the original hand painted signage found in the T. H. & B Railway station in Hamilton Ontario, a classic Art Moderne building, designed by the New York architectural firm of Fellheimer and Wagner for the Toronto Hamilton and Buffalo Railway line and completed in 1933.

Paciak is a hand-drawn dynamic font that provides you an opportunity to create fresh and intricate design projects. It is loaded with handy features including-alternate characters for all numbers and letters (it has mixed upper and lowercase characters to make it more crazy), multi-language coverage and is accompanied with vague borders and ornaments. This extraordinary mix will give you a lot of fun!

Virtual is an experimental fantasy font based on a pseudo optical enclosure where a linear system that is not connected there. Virtual comes in three weights: regular. light, and thin also an virtual mix by mixing different thicknesses in a single font, with alternative variations through features of open type. Virtual is an experience based on play with the laws of the Gestalt of closing.

Return Pass JNL is the solid version of Forward Passed JNL and can be used as a standalone font or in combination with Return Pass Fill JNL (the inline version with the main letters stripped away) for a dual color design. In some applications the inline fill may appear to create a cast shadow effect, so it may be necessary to manually adjust any overlaid copy.

Mates Malty was created by mixing different styles of hand writing fonts that derived from various tools such as painting brushes, markers and inkpen in order to develop a new and diverse font styles. We also keep incomplete details and uneven textures that resulted from the writing process. We provide various font styles to help you mix and mach them to suit your creative work harmoniously.

Spur Stencil JNL gets its inspiration from the single word "stencils" lettered on a vintage package of Glass Wax Christmas stencils.

PyeMan is a rounded block typeface influenced by home computer games from the 1980s. Examples include Asteroids, Defender and Pac-Man.

Lagniappe is a thin decorative font. Kerning is not the best on this one. You may want to adjust as needed.

An imperfect mix between a Roman and a Modern font, Marc Anthony can be used easily for display or body text.

Here you have the FG Well well font who's a scribbling man in the 40+ years who's in a terrible rush.

SIAS opens a new chapter in Irish vernacular typography: the Andron-2-Irish font family. The genes of the insular typographic heritage have been blended with the timeless classical style of the versatile Andron series. Whereas most Irish-style fonts available more or less stick to ancient designs, Andron-2-EIR is different: it’s an entirely new design in which Irishness meets the beauty of a matured Venetian Roman text face. Envision a new horizon for setting Irish text in its own visual mode! Now you can utilize Italics, Semibold and Small capitals for Irish just as you have been doing in other languages for a long time. But the icing on the cake is the fifth font: Andron Irish Middlecase honours the rich medieval tradition of Ireland by a special uncial-style glyph set. It corresponds to the Andron MC series. Last but not least the Irish type connoisseur will relish this font package for it’s unique utilization of Opentype functionality. In Opentype-aware applications, by just ticking a box you can switch to the special insular forms of s and r. By ticking another box you can transform the text from modern-day orthography to the traditional spelling with lenited consonants. This built-in intelligence has never been implemented in any Irish font before. Briefly, the Opentype substitution features are: [Ligatures] – default basic f-ligatures; [Descretionary Ligatures] – more ligatures for typographic reason, mainly t- and long-s-combinations; [Style set 1] – turns all lowercase r and s into their insular glyph variants; [Style set 2] – replaces all consonant-h digraphs by dotted consonants (ḃċḋḟġṁṗṡẛṫ, ḂĊḊḞĠṀṖṠṪ), works for lowercase, uppercase and upper-lowercase alike; [Style set 3] – provides another range of additional special ligatures (for Regular and Italic only); [Oldstyle figures] – turns the default lining figures into proportional oldstyle figures. Andron Irish will also perfectly combine with every other Andron product in mixed settings. For an overview please go to the SIAS main page. For a quick reference go to Andron Latin, Andron Greek, Andron English or Andron MC. For more wonderful new Irish fonts look at Hibernica and Ardagh!

Buntypes Bunaero™ combines classical and contemporary characteristics to a unique and distinctive font family with extravagant but also harmonious appearance. The characters are clear, open and sometimes bellied. Especially the caps have a very high waistline. Based on this, four main states with different moods have been composed: The original Bunaero™, the more conservative “Classic”, the elegant and curvy “Up” and the matching ”Italic”. All states offer weights from a considerably thin „Hair“ to a real fat „Heavy“, so the family consist of 34 Styles, all with rather narrow width and very good legibility. The font was manually hinted and contains extensive handcrafted kerning tables to ensure flawless appearance in all media. It supports at least 99 languages incl. Vietnamese and provides ligatures, alternative glyphs, special localized forms and even more enjoyable OpenType® features. This Pro version of Bunaero also includes a lot of features for sophisticated users: Lining figures for headline setting; Intermediate linings and oldstyle figures for text setting; Tabular versions of all figures; Superiors, inferiors, numerators, denominators and automated fractions; Language specialities like a capital Eszett for the german language and extra characters with a polish kreska instead an acute; And many more. Further information: Bunaero™ Pro Specimen PDF Bunaero™ Pro OpenType® Quickguide Feature Summary*: -4 Moods: Normal, Classic, Up and Italic -9 weights: Hair, Light, Thin, SemiLight, Regular, SemiBold, Bold, ExtraBold and Heavy -Supports at least 99 Languages incl. eastern european and vietnamese languages -Overall width: Narrow or Space-Saving -Advanced f- ligature set including fb -Discretionary s- and c- ligatures -Alternative Characters: a, e, f, g, i, k, l, t, v, w, y, J, K, Q, R, and more -6 sets of figures: -Capital sized figures, oldstyle figures and intermediate figures, each in proportional and carefully adjusted tabular versions -Superiors, inferiors, numerators and denominators -Circled and negative circled figures -Capital German Eszett -Extra characters with Polish Kreska -Catalan Punt Volat -Extra characters with alternate minmalistic Cedille -Arrows -Automated feature for fractions as well as extended fraction character set -More than 1000 characters per font * Some features may only be available in OpenType®-savvy applications