It's a very happy day when we stumble upon beautiful alphabets that were never digitized. It is even a happier day when the beautiful alphabet finds its way to us through friends and people who like our work. Some two months ago, the forms of this gorgeous font were pointed to us by a friend who saw it in an old Dover Publications specimen book showcasing historical alphabets. It was there under the name Vanessa, with nothing else to go by. We looked and researched for further information but found nothing else. So this gem comes to you like a coal that winked its way out of the ashes because it wanted to shine again. Flirt is very authentic art deco with a noticeable element of artistic pride, swashy delicate majuscules and very aristocratic, fashionable and flirty minuscules. The majuscules can be used as every other capitals usually are, or as initial caps. The minuscules can very nicely stand on their own quite independently from the caps whenever desired. These letters are quite similar to the hand lettering used on of the kind of theater posters, specifically burlesque and opera entertainment, which are now considered very retro-chic and fashionable to see hanging on walls in home or office. The initial specimen we worked from showed a single basic art deco alphabet with numerals which seemed as they belonged to another font. That alphabet became the base Flirt font, the numerals were redrawn to fit much better with the minuscules, and the character set was greatly expanded to include punctuation, accented characters, and many many alternates, especially for the majuscules. Majuscules with a descending right vertical stroke were a common artistic touch in the high days of theater posters, so we thought they would be great additions to the character set. These alternates can be found all over the font. So to maximize the design fun, have a character map or glyphs palette handy when you use Flirt. After the base font was finished, we thought it would be a good idea to give it a bold treatment unlike anything seen out there, and the farthest thing from the mechanical bolds seen everywhere now. This bolding treatment consisted of thickening the lowercase's vertical strokes inwards, but leaving the horizontal stroke weight as is, and thickening only the thicker vertical strokes of the uppercase. The result is quite the visual feat. We encourage you to test both the regular and bold weights and see for yourself.

Introducing Meritocracy, a full-featured handwritten font with tons of alternate characters and OpenType features. My goal with this font was to make you a typeface that will look as much like hand lettering as possible. Using the built-in OpenType pseudo-random contextual alternates and over 300 individually drawn ligatures, you can infuse your typography with personality and variety.** OpenType Features Meritocracy comes with more than 900 glyphs! Specific OpenType features include contextual alternates, stylistic alternates, a second stylistic set for variety, multiple alternate glyphs for many letters (accessed through the glyphs panel), multilingual support (including multiple currency symbols), standard numbers, and seven ampersand styles. It also includes 325+ standard and discretionary ligatures, all of them individually hand-drawn to be different from all other glyphs in the font. These ligatures allow you to give a super-realistic hand-lettered look to your typography. You can write the same word in so many different ways if you combine the default set, stylistic set 01, and standard and discretionary ligatures in different ways. SPECIAL OPENTYPE FEATURE: If you are using OpenType-capable software like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, or CorelDraw and you have contextual alternates turned on, you can see the letters randomize themselves as you type, mixing from the default character set and stylistic set 01. (You can always turn on contextual alternates after you have already typed your passage and it will randomize all at once, or you can choose to turn off contextual alternates and substitute specific glyphs yourself - I find that if I'm typing a word or two, I prefer to control the individual glyphs myself; if I'm typing a paragraph, I like to use the built-in randomness of the contextual alternates feature). Note that this pseudo-randomization (aka contextual alternate feature) is ON by default in Apple's Pages app and OFF by default in Microsoft Word, but it can be turned on. The OpenType features can be very easily accessed by using OpenType-savvy programs such as Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign. (To access most of these awesome features in Microsoft Word, you'll need to get comfortable with the advanced tab of Word's font menu. If you have questions about this, ask me!) Files included: Meritocracy-Regular.otf Please note: there is only one file for this font. That's the magic of OpenType - all of the alternates, ligatures, etc. are built right into the .otf file! Mail support : julie@upupcreative.com --- Find inspiration (and sneak peeks at my next font-in-progress) on - Instagram: http://instagram.com/julieatupupcreative - Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/upupcreative - Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/upupcreative - My website: http://upupcreative.com --- **PLEASE ENJOY! I can't wait to see what you make with Meritocracy! Feel free to use the #upupcreative and #meritocracyfont tags to show me what you've been up to!**