Palatino® Nova is Prof. Hermann Zapf's redesign of his own masterpiece, Palatino. The original Palatino was cut in metal by August Rosenberger at D. Stempel AG typefoundry in Frankfurt, and released in 1950. Palatino was later adapted for mechanical composition on the Linotype machine, and became one of the most-used typefaces of the 20th Century. Palatino was designed for legibility, and has open counters and carefully weighted strokes. The type was named after Giambattista Palatino, a master of calligraphy from the time of Leonardo da Vinci. Palatino is a typeface based on classical Italian Renaissance forms. A modern classic in its own right, Palatino is popular among professional graphic designers and amateurs alike, working well for both text and display typography. Hermann Zapf and Akira Kobayashi redeveloped Palatino for the 21st Century, creating Palatino Nova. Released by Linotype in 2005, the Palatino Nova family is part of Linotype's Platinum Collection. Palatino Nova includes several weights (Light, Regular, Medium, and Bold), each with companion italics. Four styles (Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic) have Greek and Cyrillic glyphs built into their character sets. The Palatino Nova family also includes revised versions of Aldus (now called Aldus Nova), as well as two titling weights. The first titling weight, Palatino Nova Titling, is based on Hermann Zapf's metal typeface Michelangelo, including Greek glyphs from Phidias Greek. The heavier titling weight, Palatino Nova Imperial, is based on Sistina. The fonts in the Palatino Nova family support all 48 Western, Central, and Eastern European languages. Additional features: ligatures and historical ligatures, Small Caps, ornaments, and a range of numerals (proportional & tabular width lining and Old style Figures, fractions, inferiors, and superiors)."

A clean, smooth rendition of the magnificent B42-type used by Johann Gutenberg in his famous 42-line Bible. In addition to the usual standard characters for typesetting modern texts, the font includes a comprehensive set of special characters, alternates and ligatures, plus Opentype features, that can be used for typesetting (almost) exactly as in Gutenberg’s Bible and later incunabula. Also available as The Oldtype “Gutenberg C” Font in a slightly roughened style simulating irregularities and ink spreads associated with old metal types, papers and parchments. The main historical sources used during the font design process were high-resolution scans from several printings of Gutenberg’s Bible. Other sources were as follows: Kapr, A. (1996), Johann Gutenberg - The Man and his Invention, Aldershot: Scolar Press (ch. 7); De Hamel, C. (2001), The Book - A History of The Bible, London: Phaidon Press (ch. 8); Füssel, S. (2005), Gutenberg and the impact of printing, Burlington: Ashgate (ch. 1); and Man, J. (2009), The Gutenberg Revolution, London: Bantam (ch. 7). Specimen, detailed character map, OpenType features, and font samples available at Alter Littera’s The Oldtype “Gutenberg B” Font Page.

This is Alter Littera’s second original design. It started as an attempt at translating into roman forms the lowercase metrics of classic blackletters, in particular those of The Oldtype “Alter Gotisch” Font. Eventually, the design process led naturally to an innovative and modern re-creation of the overall forms and style of classic bold condensed letters from the early twentieth century, especially those of the “Century Bold Condensed” type from American Type Founders (ATF) Company’s American Specimen Book of Type Styles, Jersey City, 1912 (pp. 274-7) [also seen in McGrew, M. (1993), American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century, New Castle: Oak Knoll Books (pp. 76-7)]. In addition to the usual standard characters for typesetting in modern Western languages, the font includes a comprehensive set of special characters, alternates, ligatures and ornaments, plus Opentype features, that can be used for creating distinctive and attractive texts with virtually unlimited variations. The glyphs are clean, smooth and definitely readable, so the font will be suitable not only for large titles and headings, but also for full text pages. Specimen, detailed character map, OpenType features, and font samples available at Alter Littera’s The Oldtype “Alter Headletter” Font Page.

LTC Italian Old Style is not to be confused with the English Monotype font also called Italian Old Style, which is an earlier design from 1911 based on William Morris’s Golden Type that is based on Nicholas Jenson’s Roman face. Goudy went back to Jenson’s original Roman and other Renaissance Roman faces for his inspiration and the result is what many consider to be the best Renaissance face adapted for modern use. Bruce Rogers was one of the biggest admirers of Italian Old Style and designed the original specimen book for Italian Old Style in 1924 using his trademark ornament arrangement. These ornaments are now contained in the pro versions of the Roman styles—Regular Pro and Light Pro. With most digitizations of old metal typefaces, one source size is often used as reference (as was Goudy’s method for his own cuttings of his Village foundry types) so that all sizes refer to one set of original artwork. The original hot metal fonts made by Lanston Monotype (from Goudy’s drawings) and other manufacturers used two or three masters for different size ranges to have optimal relative weights—smaller type sizes would need proportionally thicker lines to not appear thin and larger sizes would require thinner lines to not appear to bulky. The variations in size ranges can also be affected by the size of the cutter head in making the master patterns. The light weights of LTC Italian Old Style were digitized from larger display sizes (14, 18, 24, 30, 36 pt) and the regular weights were digitized from smaller composition sizes (8,10,12 pt). The fitting for the regular weights is noticeably looser to allow for better setting at small sizes. Very few font revivals take this approach. Italian Old Style, originally designed by Frederic Goudy in 1924, was digitized by Paul Hunt in 2007. In 2013, it has been updated by James Grieshaber and is now offered as a Pro font. The newly expanded Pro font includes all of the original ligatures, plus small caps and expanded language coverage in all 4 Pro styles.

Silk Script is a revival and elaborate expansion of a 1956 Helmut Matheis script called Primadonna, which strangely remained a metal face and never made the leap into the film age. Silk Script has the unmistakable high contrast and elegance of formal scripts, yet both its majuscules and minuscules show much more complex and visually appealing art than traditional copperplate or Spencerian calligraphy. When set properly, it adds just the needed extra touch of artistic flair to designs that are not visually satisfying with the usual high-contrast elegant scripts. Silk Script comes in two styles, with the Alt font containing form variations on almost every letter, allowing for flexibility and precision in choice typesetting. Plenty of more alternates are available throughout the character sets of both fonts. Both styles also boast expanded character sets that include support for Central and Eastern European languages, as well as Baltic, Celtic, Esperanto, Maltese and Turkish. Silk Script Pro unifies both styles in one font, for 550 characters of sheer elegance and handy OpenType features including stylistic alternates, discretionary ligatures and class-based kerning.

Sporting pot-hook serifs and a tiny aperture, the Scotch Modern was an evolution of the Didone and Scotch Roman classifications, becoming the default type genre of the 19th century. Recontextualizing the 10-point type of a scientific report published in 1873, Nick Shinn has produced sleekly refined, micro-detailed vector drawings by eye, without the assistance of scans, of this magnificent classic. A beautiful genre of type, so popular in books, magazines and advertisements during the Victorian era and much of the 20th century, the Scotch Modern was derided by advocates of both the Arts & Crafts movement and 20th century modernists, and was never been properly adapted to hot metal, phototype, or digital media -- until now. Now the full range of typographic expression is possible in this style. The OpenType fonts support Western and CE encodings, Cyrillic (with Bulgarian alternates) and Polytonic Greek. There are many special features, including small caps, unicase, italic swash capitals, ten sets of figures per font, and both slashed and nut (vertical) fractions. Together with Figgins Sans, comprises The ModernSuite of matched fonts.

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).

The Samba family was inspired by the lettering art of J. Carlos, a Brazilian illustrator during the early 20th century. Turned into a workable series of fonts by the contemporary Brazilian designers Tony and Caio de Marco, Samba is especially recommended for use in logos, flyers, posters, and tattoos! This family offers the user a chance to mix three different styles of lettering into one coherent design, which can be very useful in solving certain design problems. While the regular Samba face is made up of mono-line letters, the style of Samba bold offers much more of a thick to thin contrast. The Samba Expert set displays lavish swash endings, which were inspired by Brazilian metal work. The Samba family was one of the winners selected during the 2003 International Type Design Contest, sponsored by Linotype GmbH.

A companion piece to Mulgrave, this font is the intermediary design between the chunky Victorian style that Mulgrave reproduces and the Ministry of Transport sans introduced in 1933 and digitised as Ministry. Although they date from between 1910 and 1933, these signs show the beginnings of several features Ministry later incorporated, notably the thinner strokes and the more modern forms of the G, M, R and S. The letter widths are approaching a monospace - the L, F and E are relatively wide compared to the W and M, a feature that may have something to do to the casting process. These idiosyncracies were all ironed out when the first version of the MOT alphabet was produced. The Device digitization, as with Mulgrave, stays true to the worn and repainted original metal source material and preserves the unusual widths.

The letters and numbers of a home movie titling kit from circa the 1950s or 1960s called the Magna Tech Titler Number 312 were die-cut from cardboard with a magnetic backing and were styled after Futura Bold. The user of this set composed the desired title or phrase onto a metalized board and the result was photographed with their 8 or 16mm camera. Because the dies of the characters were handmade, very slight variations in the shape and stroke width of the lettering would occasionally occur. These variations were incorporated into the design of the digital type face. Intermediate JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Homenko was the only Ukrainian typeface for metal type casting developed in the last century. It has already become a 'classic'. Vasyl Homenko worked on it from 1964 to 1967. The typeface successfully combines the qualities of lineal humanist typefaces with the Ukrainian tradition of asymmetrical slab serif. The works on its digitization and further development has been in progress since 2000. The present version contains Latin Extended characters, Cyrillic with stressed alternates and several ornaments based on Vasyl Homenko's works. It works perfectly for books for children and is ideal for publications related to culture, history, literature and traditional art of Ukraine and other nations of Eastern Europe.

Up until the advent of modern packing and shipping methods, the common way to mark merchandise or other items to be transported was through the use of a brass stencil. These marking devices were hand stamped (or punched) using metal dies that were struck against sheets of brass to create the letters, numbers and other symbols [unlike the steel rule die cutting method used for manufacturing paper stencils]. One such example of an antique marking stencil had letters and numbers approximately one quarter of an inch in height, and Stamped Brass Stencil JNL recreates the design complete with the unusual variations of character shapes and widths.

Camelot was the first of over 100 typefaces designed by Frederic Goudy. The upper case characters were drawn in 1896 for the Dickinson Type Foundry. Goudy was so encouraged by his check for $10 (double what he asked for the drawings), that he spent the next 50 years designing type. The lower case was added by the Dickinson foundry. This Lanston digital release includes a Text version based on the smaller point sizes of the metal type and a Display version based on the larger sizes. The two appear different in size but share the exact same line weight when at the same point size.

Goudy Trajan Pro is based on the drawings by F.W. Goudy of his rendition of the capital letters inscribed on the Trajan column in Rome, rather than on his subsequent metal type, Trajan (Title), released in 1930. Goudy Trajan Pro includes almost 1500 glyphs in each of three weights, including: uppercase, alternates, swash caps, small caps, vertically centered small(er) caps, dozens of fleurons, and much more. Supports Latin, Cyrillic and modern Greek scripts. Many thanks to Krassen Krestev, Sergiy Tkachenko, and Adam Twardoch for their suggestions for improving the Cyrillic glyphs; and to Alex Sheldon for his suggestions for swash caps and improved OpenType features.

Arthur Baker's display script Sassafras, designed in 1995, is based on the natural inline effect created when writing with a split-metal nibbed pen. Black and white are nicely balanced, giving this calligraphic face a remarkably smooth appearance. The regular and italic versions of Sassafras include two alternate faces: one with long, tall ascenders and regular-length descenders, and one with shortened ascenders and descenders that allow it to fit where its companion might not. In both, the ascenders increase in width as they move upward, while the descenders taper to a fine point. This variety of form makes Sassafras a very flexible choice for display work.

Blumenkind is a fresh, bright, humanist script font radiating boundless optimism and friendly enthusiasm. Its strokes are based on the rounded triangle, which lends it a dynamic bounce and a confident human touch. It shines in a wide range of display and editorial applications, but excels in particular in the context of art, creativity, food, social events, and spirituality. Blumenkind is inspired by an instance of metal-strip lettering found on the B�rgermeister Kornmesser Siedlung residential building complex in Berlin from the 1960s. The font name, being German for �flower child�, aims to capture the positive zeitgeist of that time evident in the letters. Blumenkind comes with extensive language support, tight kerning, attractive ligatures, and subtly varied alternate shapes for some of the most commonly doubled letters � and all that in three linear weights and one calligraphic weight. Furthermore, a complementary version of the font (Blumenkind Alternate) is available, in which the overlapping tittles and accent marks of the original are replaced with more traditional free-floating marks. This font is dedicated to the miracle of medical science. Thanks to Georg Seifert, Rainer Scheichelbauer, and Michael Wallner for technical aid.

Yakout is an Arabic text face that was developed by Linotype & Machinery in 1956 for hot-metal typesetting. Similar to the typewriter fonts created during this period, it utilises a limited range of letterforms to represent a full Arabic characer set, thus forming a style of type design known as Simplified Arabic. The skilful reshaping of letterforms demanded by the constraints of the original restrictive technology has given Yakout a very dynamic effect, and has helped to produce a design whose overall pattern works particularly well in newspaper setting. Digital technology has enhanced the original design by permitting the introduction of wide characters and some additional letterforms, and by improving the joining of the strong, slightly curved baseline. Yakout is available in two OpenType weights: Yakout Light and Yakout Bold. Both of the fonts include Latin glyphs (from Times Europa Roman and Times Europa Bold, respectively) inside the font files, allowing a single font to set text in both most Western European and Arabic languages. Yakout incorporate the Basic Latin character set and support all languages that use the Arabic script. They include tabular and proportional Arabic, Persian, and Urdu numerals and a set of tabular European (Latin) numerals.

Quiller is another catch from the hot metal days, another one that managed to slip through the fingers of both the photo-typers and digitizers of last 4 decades. JJ Sierke’s Privat design from 1966 is now resurrected and heavily extended to be used by computer users everywhere. The original design was revived, and two whole new fonts were added to it - one with very unique swash caps and alternates, and one with many many ligatures and letter-combination ornaments. Quiller is a cross between brush calligraphy and very casual fast handwriting. It even has a slight Arabic simulation to it. Given such traits, the addition of a swash font and a multitude of ligatures comes in very handy to keep the natural flow of the font and maintain the elegance of its spirit. Those who like the auto-magic of OpenType’s intelligent substitution should like the fact that the OTF version is a single font with all the bells and whistles ready to go in the swash and discretionary ligatures features. If you use the latest versions of Adobe programs, the OTF version of Quiller is highly recommended.

After a lot of time sitting at my desk, creating fonts and trying to figure out how my new software works, I really like to work out a bit. The only thing that I do not like is the music they play at the gym; it is usually a selection of poppy tunes that appeals to a large audience. But not to me. I prefer my death metal - and eighties music, as it brings back a lot of good memories. So, I bought myself some ear buds and installed a music streaming app on my phone. Yes, I know, I am probably the last person on earth who discovered streaming... One day, during a workout session, I listened to a list of eighties music and one song that I had forgotten about started playing: Rappers Delight by The Sugarhill Gang. When I started working on the font, I had to think about the song and named it Square Beat. Square Beat font, other than the name implies, is a rounded, handmade font, ideally suited for books and magazines aimed at a young audience, toy packaging or posters. It comes with great language support, including Vietnamese.

Basic Commercial is a font based on historical designs from the hot metal typeface era. It first appeared around 1900, and was created by type designers whose names have not been recorded but whose skills cannot be overlooked. This typeface's design has been popular among groups and movements as diverse as the Bauhaus, Dadaism, and the masters of Swiss/International-Style typography. It influenced for a variety of later grotesque fonts, such as Helvetica and Univers. Basic Commercial was distributed for many years in the United States under the name Standard Series. The typeface worked its way into many aspects of daily life and culture; for instance, it became the face chosen for use in the New York City subway system's signage. The Basic Commercial's font family members have a clear and objective design. Their forms exhibit almost nothing unusual, but remain both lively and legible nonetheless. Perhaps for this reason, Basic Commercial's design has been popular with graphic designers for decades. To read more about the history of typefaces like Basic Commercial, visit our font feature, The Sans Serif Typefaces. In addition several weights of this typefamily are available as soft rounded versions."

Raljon is a display typeface created by designer and lettering artist Mark Robinson. It is a collaboration between the Mmarkk and Teen-Beat Graphica visual design studios. This single font was created over a period of five years. Mark took great care in finessing each character and making sure that each character would stand on its own and yet simultaneously, be an integral part of the whole. The typeface is inspired by Gothic letterforms, horror novels, speed metal bands of the 1980s, techno and electronic music of the 1990s, and Washington, DC football teams whose stadiums lie in the Maryland suburbs. While it doesn’t have multiple weights, Raljon does have a deep depth and breadth. It has a seemingly endless amount of alternate characters and ligatures. There are nine letter Ms, eight letter As and Fs, seven Rs and Ts, and the list goes on. Even the figures have alternates.

Eckhardt Poster Text JNL continues Jeff Levine's series of sign painter-oriented fonts, named in honor of his good friend Albert Eckhardt, Jr. (who ran Allied signs in Miami, Florida from 1959 until his passing). Sign painters are the true heroes of lettering, for they make the alphabet and style fit the job. Printers and layout artists were constricted by metal and wood type; that is until photo lettering, then digital type opened up unexplored territories in design possibilities. There is a unique charm (and nowadays pretty much a lost art) to hand-lettering word copy in a way that draws the eye like an arrow to a target. Even a simple sanserif such as Eckhardt Poster Text JNL can have the effect of that hand lettering when applied to posters and pages with plenty of white space and matching type designs of the period.

Unique and decorative signage for many drive-ins, motels, food stores and other businesses of the 1940s had what was referred to as “privilege signs” provided by one of the major cola brands. Consisting of the brand’s emblem on a decorative panel, the remainder of the sign would carry the desired message of the storekeeper (such as “Drive-In”) in prismatic, embossed metal letters. Inspired by the Art Deco sans serif style of those vintage signs, Privilege Sign Two JNL recreates the type design in both regular and oblique versions. The typefaces are solid black, but adding a selected color and a prismatic effect from your favorite graphics program can reproduce the look and feel of those old businesses. This is a companion font to Privilege Sign JNL, which recreates the condensed sans serif lettering of other privilege signs from the 1950s and early 1960s.

After researching the type styles contemporary graphic designers have been using over the past few years, I noticed a consistent use of Copperplate Gothic, and its derivative designs, for various corporate advertising campaigns. That level of usage gave me the inspiration to design a display font possessing subtle characteristics of Copperplate Gothic, and various Latin Condensed designs. The font I ended up designing was semi-condensed, with more contrast between thicks and thins than in Copperplate. Baltra also has a subtle flair in its otherwise traditional lowercase, while possessing a larger than average lowercase x-height. Copperplate Gothic, on the other hand, has minimal contrast and uses small capitals for its lowercase. After examining extensive type specimens from wood type, metal type, phototype and digital type, I was not able to find a single design possessing a majority of Baltra's characteristics. Consequently, I consider Baltra to be a truly unique design, sharing with Copperplate Gothic only its flairs on stems, and having only subtle characteristics in common with traditional Latin designs.

Introducing Zephyrus, our new condensed modern cyber font that's designed to take your designs to the next level! With its unique condensed squared feel, this font is perfect for anyone looking to add a modern and futuristic touch to their work. But we didn't stop there - we've also included a rounded version of Zephyrus, which softens the edges and provides a more approachable feel. This versatility means that you can use Zephyrus for a wide range of design projects, from logos and branding to websites and digital presentations. In addition, Zephyrus comes equipped with numerals, symbols, punctuation, and foreign language support, making it a versatile and functional font that's suitable for global projects. Whether you're creating a tech-based project or looking to add a futuristic touch to your branding, Zephyrus has you covered. Zephyrus is a great font for modern and futuristic designs. Its unique condensed squared feel and rounded version make it a versatile choice for a wide range of design applications. Here are some perfect use cases for Zephyrus font: Technology-based websites and apps: Zephyrus is an excellent choice for designing websites and apps that focus on technology and innovation. Its modern and futuristic design complements the content of these websites and apps and creates an atmosphere of innovation. Corporate branding: Zephyrus can be used to create a modern and innovative corporate branding identity for companies in the technology and innovation sectors. It is perfect for creating logos, letterheads, business cards, and other branded materials. Advertising campaigns: Zephyrus is perfect for advertising campaigns that require a futuristic or high-tech look and feel. It can be used in print ads, online ads, and other promotional materials to create a sense of innovation and modernity. Product packaging: Zephyrus can be used to create packaging designs for technology-based products. Its modern and futuristic design can help these products stand out on shelves and create an impression of innovation and quality. Presentations: Zephyrus is a great choice for creating compelling and modern presentations. Its unique design can add an element of creativity and innovation to your presentations and help you stand out from the competition. Video game design: Zephyrus can be used to create a video game design that requires a futuristic or cyberpunk style. Its unique design can help create an immersive gaming experience for players. In conclusion, Zephyrus is the perfect choice for anyone looking for a condensed modern cyber font that's both versatile and functional. With its squared feel, rounded version, and support for numerals, symbols, punctuation, and foreign languages, Zephyrus is a font that's sure to take your designs to the next level! Zephyrus features: A full set of uppercase Numbers and punctuation Multilingual language support PUA Encoded Characters OpenType Features Cyber Style +278 Total Glyphs ⚠️To enable the OpenType Stylistic alternates, you need a program that supports OpenType features such as Adobe Illustrator CS, Adobe InDesign & CorelDraw X6-X7, Microsoft Word 2010, or later versions. There are additional ways to access alternates/swashes, using Character Map (Windows), Nexus Font (Windows), Font Book (Mac) or a software program such as Pop Char (for Windows and Mac). ⚠️For more information about accessing alternatives, you can see this link: http://adobe.ly/1m1fn4Y ——— 🔑Important tutorial from the author: Tutorial for Mollusca font trio: https://lnkd.in/d984CQD6 How to use Midway | Retro Script Font on illustrator: https://lnkd.in/eusbZd7s How to use Midway | Retro Script Font on Photoshop: https://lnkd.in/evsYrwgs How to use Hellfire Flames | Death Metal Font on Photoshop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0MSBYzl9EM&t=35s How to use Rusted Sabbath | Black Metal Font Font on Photoshop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BTTgnSszsM&t=6s How to use Black Dread | Death Metal Font on Photoshop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKoSvIEbdZ4 ——— 🔥 Thank you for purchasing our product, hope you like it and have fun with our product. If you have any queries, questions, or issues, please don't hesitate to contact us directly. If you are satisfied with our product, please give 5 stars rating. ——— Happy Designing...😊

Mindful that Hiragino Sans (Kaku Gothic) would be used in conjunction with Hiragino Serif (Mincho), SCREEN developed a font that anticipated today’s world where most people do their reading on displays and yet still has an orthodox letterform that does not blur when printed on paper. In short, our goal with this font was to create a new concept that responds to the demands of today’s times. This font offers weight variations from W0 to W9 and is extremely versatile. This makes it well-suited to all visual expression media including paper, metallic textures, resins, cloth, television, movies, broadcasting, websites, and electronic displays. One of the design’s strongpoints is that it elides serif on the right side of each stroke, thus delivering more spacious counters and a comfortable appearance. Thanks to this, the typeface not only delivers a contemporary, lively impression same as Latin sans serif typefaces, but also heightens the natural continuity and readability of text whether it is set vertically or horizontally. As a result, it makes it possible to bring a strong appealing power to text. Without a doubt, this is typeface that above else embodies the role of Sans Serif.

The Colville fonts began their existence in 2015 as a project-specific typeface, made to be used on a custom-made headstone commemorating Canadian artist Alex Colville (1920-2013) and his wife Rhoda Wright. For that purpose, some initial shapes were modelled after letters Colville himself had used on a Governor General gold medal he designed in the mid-1970s. From there started a year-long project that culminated in a set of four comprehensive fonts ranging in weight from Light to Bold, each containing over 750 glyphs to cover Pan European language support, stylistic alternates, five sets of figures, automatic fractions, and some ornaments rooted in Alex Colville’s art. These fonts exhibit a strong art deco aesthetic that has always been a favourite of architects, metal casters, and sign makers. This is a very humanist geometry alternating from the precisely calculated to the curvy and lithe, subtle contrast, flat stroke stops, and airy proportions that make for a counterspace built for accommodation and comfort. The breadth and timeless humanism of the Colville set makes fit in a variety of applications, from straightforward headlines, titles, and emphasis captions, to branding and packaging.

Madison Antiqua was original released as a metal typeface for hand-setting in 1965. The letters were produced by D. Stempel AG in Frankfurt, Germany. Their design was based heavily on an earlier German typeface named Amts-Antiqua, which had also been produced by Stempel. Amts-Antiqua is credited to Henrich Hoffmeister, and he developed it between 1909 and 1919. Madison Antiqua is an excellent selection for body text in magazines and newspapers. The typeface features a characteristic x-height, and attention-grabbing serifs. For a time, Madison Antiqua was associated with advertising design, because of its namesake: Madison Avenue in New York. Madison Avenue is a global center of advertising excellence.

In researching historic decorative material offered by Lanston Monotype as well as other metal foundries such as Barnhart Brothers and Spindler, there were occasionally ornaments that defied description. Perhaps it was a Victorian sense of humor or someone really thought these were a good idea or perhaps popular taste has just changed so much over the last hundred years, or our forbearers were completely insane. In any case, LTC is somewhat proud to present a collection of the most bizarre, disturbing and baffling printers ornaments we could find. Along with mutant fowl-children and frolicsome amphibians, there are also Masonic and other secret fraternal symbols that may not be creepy to everyone, but just enough to be moderately disturbing.

A sheet music edition of an early 1900s song entitled "You Taught Me How to Love You, Now Teach Me to Forget" was hand lettered in a free-form Art Nouveau style that combined varying line widths and character shapes. This unrestricted style of lettering was popularly embraced and revived by the hippie counterculture of the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s through their rock concert posters, record album covers and tee shirt graphics. It is now available digitally as Nouveau Artiste JNL. As a side note, a 1940s reprint of the sheet music was done in a popular metal typeface, which was also redrawn digitally and available as Elite Resort JNL [in both regular and oblique versions].

Acklebury is a chunky, reverse contrast, slab-serif typeface available in two styles. It has heaps of personality, plenty of open type features, and a whole host of special characters and dingbats. Although it's drawn from historical sources, Acklebury is not a straight revival, rather more of an homage to the many, varied, extended lining figures of the late 1800's. Acklebury celebrates the once labelled 'hideous' combination of wide rounded forms and hard slab serifs. Only using modern type technology to fix the spacing and kerning issues that would of been impossible with metal or wooden type. Acklebury is not a French Clarendon, neither is it really an Italienne... but it is phat, wide and hella funky.

dT Jakob started as a revival by Gustavo Soares for Paul van der Laan’s class at the Type and Media Masters, in The Hague, NL – back in 2007. There are quite a few excellent geometric sans typefaces available, but we did want to make our contribution and have a fine geometric face to offer. dT Jakob was born out of Erbar, by Jakob Erbar, one of the very first geometric sans, released in metal around 1926. Our goal was to make a versatile typeface, that handles display and text typography beautifully. To achieve that we designed a complete range of weights, matching italics and lots of OpenType Features. Hope you enjoy it :D

Merc is a four-letter word that stops just one y short of Mercy. Merc is also the standard street abbreviation for mercenary, or a soldier for hire. Now that the global security business has become a two hundred billion dollar industry, we thought you would like to have your very own affordable merc. Knew you'd be pleased. Merc is based on an all-cap metal face called Agitator, designed by Wolfgang Eickhoff and published by Typoart in 1960. The rough brush letters look like they were made by someone who is capable of elegance but has no time for it. These are letters that live to catch the eyes and warn them loudly: Doom is here, and if you want it screamed out, this Merc is at your service. This font contains more than 460 glyphs, which means quite a few stylistic alternates and support for the majority of Latin languages.

ITC Hedera's roots can be traced to a suite of initials intended for book design. Olivera Stojadinovic, the face's designer, made the first sketches for the initials with a handmade tool consisting of two flexible metal strips tied to a wooden handle. This makeshift pen created the distinctive uneven double strokes of the letterforms. Stojadinovic says that she tried to keep the original flavor of the sketches in the finished font. Stroke roughness has been preserved in final execution, though the characters had some cleaning and polishing," she notes. Based on Renaissance letterforms, ITC Hedera has a classical quality that complements its calligraphic exuberance. The name Hedera? According to Stojadinovic, "It's the name of a common ivy. I chose it because of the organic image of the character strokes, which, to me, resemble shapes from nature's leaves or stems of plants." Rough-hewn yet elegant, ITC Hedera is an exceptional display design."

Genesis is a digitization and expansion of a Frank Riley metal typeface called Grayda, originally published to much applause by ATF in 1939. The concept for this disconnected script is quite novel and original among cursives and calligraphic fonts: The minuscules are mostly made with slightly clubbed strokes, which becomes clearly visible in the ascenders and descenders. This alone gives the face a bubbly appearance unlike any other. The formula is completed with two sets of beautiful calligraphic majuscules and a few alternates. The character set of Genesis boasts full support for Western, Central and Eastern European languages, as well as Baltic, Celtic/Welsh, Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish and Vietnamese. Genesis is available for all platforms and in all popular formats. Genesis Pro, the OpenType version, is where the caps and a few other variations alternate stylistically at the push of a button in OT-savvy applications. Genesis Pro also contains class-based kerning.

Chop chop! VLNL Cleaver is an important tool in the Vette Letters’ kitchen. It’s a butcher knife of a font. Razor sharp, ultra heavy and with pointy slanted serifs. At first glance it seems straight-lined, but a closer look revails that all straight lines are curved inward slightly, which enhances the sharp image even more. Cleaver was originally designed by DBXL for cutting meat - hell, it even hacks right through bone. It can easily splice a chicken in one slash or seperate ribs, just like that. You can also very well use it to chop up hard vegetables like pumpkin or squash on the chopping block. It gets better, the opposite blunt side can be deployed to crush ingredients like garlic, nuts or spices like black pepper. You could use a grinder, but with Cleaver it’s more fun, isn’t it? VLNL Cleaver is suitable to give a sharp edge to flyers, posters, logos (Heavy metal bands and other) or magazine headlines.

Balcony is a decorative display typeface inspired by the patterns of metal safety grills. Its highly geometric features may be used to identify it as Art Deco. It is a monospaced type family with all characters confined in a square frame. The main idea of Balcony is to create a grill-like pattern when letterforms are placed together. This creates an illusionary experience for the reader. The best way to use this typeface is without leading, as shown in the visuals. Balcony also comes with two stylistic sets. The first stylistic set contains most characters with more decorative elements and the second one includes Dingbats. These Dingbats are motifs with simple geometric patterns that may be used for any kind of ornamentation. The diacritics letterforms are geometrically squeezed within the square frame to include the accents. This experimental typeface comes with about 650 characters and four weights (Thin, Light, Regular and Bold). The font family supports Western and Central European languages.

Linotype Projekt was created by German type designer Andreas Koch with both a well-defined inspiration and goal. It occurred to me that typefaces like Helvetica and Univers seemed to have a higher quality in hot-metal composition as with modern digital typesetting. They are stronger and livelier. This is in part due to the printing process, which presses the characters onto paper, and in part to the forms of the letters, which differ from the PostScript version of the same typeface. An important aspect of printing is the slight increase in character width resulting from the pressure which also serves as an optical correction to the forms. (True exact squares appear slightly barrel-formed to the eye.) I wanted to revive this peculiarity, not because of a nostalgic feeling, rather just because it is more attractive." The result is Linotype Projekt, a text font which is harmonious, clear and extremely legible. Koch lives in Bielefeld, Germany, and is a freelance book and type designer."

The above-the-store signage for many newspaper stands, soda shops, candy stores, luncheonettes and pharmacies of the 1950s and early 1960s were what was referred to as “privilege signs” provided by one of the major cola brands. Consisting of the brand’s emblems on the left and right, the remainder of the sign would carry the desired message of the storekeeper (such as “Candy – Soda – Newspapers”) in prismatic, embossed metal letters. Inspired by these vintage signs, Privilege Sign JNL recreates the condensed sans serif lettering style in both regular and oblique versions. The typefaces are solid black, but adding a selected color and a prismatic effect from your favorite graphics program can reproduce the look and feel of those old businesses.