Periódico (newspaper in Spanish), was originally commissioned by the Spanish daily newspaper ABC. Inspired by old Spanish typographic engravings, mostly from the second half of the 18th Century, we picked out the most relevant details of Spanish typography as the source of that inspiration, and instead of making a revival or an interpretation of these models, we started from scratch to create a truly original font family. The goal was to achieve a very distinctive family, functional and versatile at the same time, and reminiscent of old Spanish typography. Although we have borrowed many details from the old Spanish typography, like the nail, which is present in the letters U, G, or J, which we worked and evolved in order to be applied on other letters, we have also left behind several others. One example is the tilde of the ñ engraved by Gerónimo Gil, a very distinctive element of Spanish typography that was intentionally omitted for being too atypical to be used in a contemporary font.  The letters a and g are probably the most distinctive of the Periódico family. The shape of the bowl in the letter a, with the top arch in diagonal position, is very characteristic of old Spanish types. In Periódico, we emphasized this detail by applying it to many other letters (such as g, j, and t) up to a point that it became the leitmotiv of this family. The formal finish of serifs and terminals is something that gives great personality to any typeface, so we came up with plenty of alternatives in order to find the exact shape we wanted: sober, elegant, and contemporary. Even though the serifs are geometric, the upper terminals have a curve with a dynamic very similar to the arch in the a or the notch in the j. The terminals in the capitals follow the same style, but, in this case, the inspiration comes from Pradell’s Missal, which on the other hand has been influenced by the types engraved by Johann Michael Fleischman in the Netherlands. Eighteenth-Century types were mostly used for printing books. Therefore, they had very generous proportions (large ascendents and descendants) and high contrast, but today, these characteristics do not work well in newspapers because of the worldwide demand for more space-saving fonts. The adaptation of the type’s proportions to be used for a newspaper was one of the most interesting parts of the project, specially the time taken to find the perfect balance between the x height\ and legibility. Periódico is presented in 30 different styles, for a total of 30 fonts—10 for text (from Light to Bold) and 20 for display sizes (from Thin to Ultra Black); this family results in an extensive system capable of solving all the needs of a large publication.

The font family Univers? is one of the greatest typographic achievements of the second half of the 20th century. The family has the advantage of having a variety of weights and styles, which, even when combined, give an impression of steadiness and homogeneity. The clear, objective forms of Univers make this a legible font suitable for almost any typographic need. In 1954 the French type foundry Deberny & Peignot wanted to add a linear sans serif type in several weights to the range of the Lumitype fonts. Adrian Frutiger, the foundry's art director, suggested refraining from adapting an existing alphabet. He wanted to instead make a new font that would, above all, be suitable for the typesetting of longer texts - quite an exciting challenge for a sans-serif font at that time. Starting with his old sketches from his student days at the School for the Applied Arts in Zurich, he created the Univers type family. In 1957, the family was released by Deberny & Piegnot, and afterwards, it was produced by Linotype. The Deberny & Peignot type library was acquired in 1972 by Haas, and the Haas'sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas Type Foundry) was folded into the D. Stempel AG/Linotype collection in 1985/1989. Adrian Frutiger continues to do design work with Linotype right up to the present day. In 1997, Frutiger and the design staff at Linotype completed a large joint project of completely re-designing and updating the Univers family. The result: Univers Next - available with 59 weights and 4 Linotype Univers Typewriter weights. With its sturdy, clean forms Univers can facilitate an expression of cool elegance and rational competence. Univers has the uncanny ability to combine well with fonts of many different styles and origins: Old style fonts such as: Janson Text, Meridien, Sabon, Wilke. Modern-stressed fonts such as: Linotype Centennial, Walbaum. Slab serif fonts such as Egyptienne F, Serifa. Script and brush fonts such as: Brush Script, Mistral, Ruling Script. Blackletter fonts such as: Duc De Berry, Grace, San Marco. Even fun fonts such as F2F OCRAlexczyk, Linotype Red Babe, Linotype Seven."

Cute FS Kitty is the type equivalent of Bagpuss: plump, cute, cuddly and not fond of exercise. So don’t go giving it a run-out on body copy; FS Kitty is an all-caps font made for showing off in posters and headlines, and on products, point-of sale and especially sweets. Blubber Kitty had been quietly curled up in Phil Garnham’s sketchbook for a year before he brought it out to be brushed up. “It was in the mix as a basic form when I started thinking about FS Lola. It was a twisted, bubbly beauty – quite squishable and huggable. The working file was called Blubber. “At that time it was a basic construction of strokes. I created the ‘A’ first, purely as a shape to play with, not as type. I flipped it for ‘V’, and copied that for a ‘W’. I flipped the ‘W’ for an ‘M’... I thought, ‘This looks a bit wacky, but I like it,’ and just carried on. The most tricky characters were the ‘B’ ‘P’ and ‘R’. I must have drawn about 20 kinds of B for this, just to get it to fit.” Variety “When the regular weight of Kitty had been designed,” says Jason Smith, “it just felt like a natural progression to go on and explore how far we could go with it: Light, Solid, Headline, Shadow.” Phil Garnham thinks there’s still more to come. “There are some really individual characters in this font that I think have yet to be exploited: the Greek Omega symbol, the strange face in the ampersand. Like Bagpuss, Kitty has kept a low profile so far. “We know people are using Kitty. In fact, it was the first of any of our fonts that we sold on the day it was released. But I still haven’t seen it out there in the wild. It’s going to be a exciting moment.”

Cute FS Kitty is the type equivalent of Bagpuss: plump, cute, cuddly and not fond of exercise. So don’t go giving it a run-out on body copy; FS Kitty is an all-caps font made for showing off in posters and headlines, and on products, point-of sale and especially sweets. Blubber Kitty had been quietly curled up in Phil Garnham’s sketchbook for a year before he brought it out to be brushed up. “It was in the mix as a basic form when I started thinking about FS Lola. It was a twisted, bubbly beauty – quite squishable and huggable. The working file was called Blubber. “At that time it was a basic construction of strokes. I created the ‘A’ first, purely as a shape to play with, not as type. I flipped it for ‘V’, and copied that for a ‘W’. I flipped the ‘W’ for an ‘M’... I thought, ‘This looks a bit wacky, but I like it,’ and just carried on. The most tricky characters were the ‘B’ ‘P’ and ‘R’. I must have drawn about 20 kinds of B for this, just to get it to fit.” Variety “When the regular weight of Kitty had been designed,” says Jason Smith, “it just felt like a natural progression to go on and explore how far we could go with it: Light, Solid, Headline, Shadow.” Phil Garnham thinks there’s still more to come. “There are some really individual characters in this font that I think have yet to be exploited: the Greek Omega symbol, the strange face in the ampersand. Like Bagpuss, Kitty has kept a low profile so far. “We know people are using Kitty. In fact, it was the first of any of our fonts that we sold on the day it was released. But I still haven’t seen it out there in the wild. It’s going to be a exciting moment.”

ZX Spectrum In 1982, a home computer came on the market that would launch the UK IT industry. The ZX Spectrum sold five million units and spawned thousands of software titles. It was the must-have gadget for every teen. FS Sinclair is inspired by the memory of Sir Clive Sinclair’s greatest creation: the experience of entering its clunky command codes and reading its simple, grid-placed type. Smart, switched-on, great in text and display, FS Sinclair is a modern grid-based font, drawn with the Spectrum in mind and brought to life by well thought-out design. Formula Having completed the font for Channel 4’s brand update, the Fontsmith team defined the formula for its next font: the creative essence of the C4 work but with more structural discipline, more rigid form and a little more seriousness. The new font wouldn’t look self-consciously retro but it would reference the past and, it was hoped, influence the future. Readability Like the ZX Spectrum, it took a while for the new font to do exactly what it was meant to do. Many of the early concepts by Phil Garnham and Jason Smith were too jagged – the result of an awareness of getting too close to existing fonts of the same ilk, such as Wim Crouwel’s Gridnik. Eventually, FS Sinclair evolved into a more readable, functional grid-based type design that answered Phil and Jason’s original, self-set brief. Idiosyncratic There’s a technological, systems feel to FS Sinclair but ultimately, humans are in charge. The lowercase “a”, “n”, “m” and “r” have clean-cut “ears”, and the square-ish design is softened by round joins on the inside of the letterforms. The idiosyncratic design of letters such as “g”, “j”, “k”, “v”, “w” and “y” bring the design up to date. This is a modular font with character, and a range of weights that allow varied application.

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.

Mencap When most of us go about everyday tasks, we take for granted the reading that’s involved, on instructions, labels and so on. For people with learning disabilities, reading is made much harder by certain fonts. FS Me is designed specifically to improve legibility for people with learning disabilities. The font was researched and developed with – and endorsed by – Mencap, the UK’s leading charity and voice for those with learning disabilities. Mencap receive a donation for each font license purchased. Every letter of FS Me was tested for its appeal and readability with a range of learning disability groups across the UK. Inclusive Fontsmith were determined to design a font that was accessible to those with learning disabilities without standing out as such – one that was inclusive of all readers. It should comply with accessibility guidelines and work best at 12pt, but still have a character of its own that was warm and approachable. “So much accessible design is done separately to the main body of brand work,” says Jason Smith. “We wanted to make a typeface that covered both brand tone and neutrality, and that could be used legitimately as a brand font as well as in accessible design.” Me, you, everyone FS Me is about design that doesn’t patronise. People with learning disabilities are often treated as inferior by childlike design. FS Me is designed for adults, not children – a beautifully-designed font for everyone. Its features include very subtle distinguishing elements of each letter to aid the reading and comprehension of texts, and tails, ascenders and descenders that have been extended for extra clarity. What the people said... Here is a sample of comments from the extensive research groups that helped to shape the letterforms of FS Me: “I want something round, clear and friendly.” “We like movement in the letters but don’t want anything childish.” “The ‘b’ and ‘d’ need to be different as they can be confused.” “I prefer the handwriting-style ‘a’.” “It’s important to have an accessible ‘a’ and ‘g’. Teachers sometimes complain that learners cannot read or understand the inaccessible ‘a’ and ‘g’.”

Mencap When most of us go about everyday tasks, we take for granted the reading that’s involved, on instructions, labels and so on. For people with learning disabilities, reading is made much harder by certain fonts. FS Me is designed specifically to improve legibility for people with learning disabilities. The font was researched and developed with – and endorsed by – Mencap, the UK’s leading charity and voice for those with learning disabilities. Mencap receive a donation for each font license purchased. Every letter of FS Me was tested for its appeal and readability with a range of learning disability groups across the UK. Inclusive Fontsmith were determined to design a font that was accessible to those with learning disabilities without standing out as such – one that was inclusive of all readers. It should comply with accessibility guidelines and work best at 12pt, but still have a character of its own that was warm and approachable. “So much accessible design is done separately to the main body of brand work,” says Jason Smith. “We wanted to make a typeface that covered both brand tone and neutrality, and that could be used legitimately as a brand font as well as in accessible design.” Me, you, everyone FS Me is about design that doesn’t patronise. People with learning disabilities are often treated as inferior by childlike design. FS Me is designed for adults, not children – a beautifully-designed font for everyone. Its features include very subtle distinguishing elements of each letter to aid the reading and comprehension of texts, and tails, ascenders and descenders that have been extended for extra clarity. What the people said... Here is a sample of comments from the extensive research groups that helped to shape the letterforms of FS Me: “I want something round, clear and friendly.” “We like movement in the letters but don’t want anything childish.” “The ‘b’ and ‘d’ need to be different as they can be confused.” “I prefer the handwriting-style ‘a’.” “It’s important to have an accessible ‘a’ and ‘g’. Teachers sometimes complain that learners cannot read or understand the inaccessible ‘a’ and ‘g’.”

Gérard Mariscalchi is a self-made designer. Born in Southern France of a Spanish mother and an Italian father, he has worked as a mechanic, salesman, pilot, college teacher – even a poet (with poetry being the worst-paying of these professions, he reports.) “Throughout all this, the backbone of my career has always been design,” Mariscalchi says. “I’ve been drawing since I was five, but it wasn’t until I was twenty-four that I learned that my hobby could also help me earn a living.” It was about this same time that Mariscalchi fell in love with type. He studied the designs of masters like Excoffon, Usherwood and Frutiger, as well as the work of calligraphers and type designers such as Plantin, Cochin and Dürer. With such an eclectic background, it’s no surprise that Mariscalchi’s typeface designs are inspired by many sources. Baylac and Evita reflect the style of the art nouveau and art deco periods, while Marnie was created as an homage to the great Lithuanian calligrapher Villu Toots. However, the touch of French elegance and distinction Mariscalchi brings to his work is all his own. Baylac Who says thirteen is an unlucky number? Three capitals and ten lowercase letters from a poster by L. Baylac, a relatively obscure Art Nouveau designer, served as the foundation for this typeface. The finished design has lush curves that give the face drama without diminishing its versatility. On the practical side, Baylac’s condensed proportions make it perfect for those situations where there’s a lot to say and not much room in which to say it Evita Mariscalchi based the design of Evita on hand lettering he found in a restaurant menu, and considers this typeface one of his most difficult design challenges. “The main problem was to render the big weight difference between the thin and the thick strokes without creating printing problems at small point sizes,” he says. Unlike most scripts, Evita is upright, with the design characteristics of a serif typeface. Mariscalchi named the face for a close friend. The end result is a charming design that is light, airy, and slightly sassy. Marnie Based on Art Nouveau calligraphic lettering, Marnie is elegant, inviting, and absolutely charming. Mariscalchi paid special attention to letter shapes and proportions to guarantee high levels of character legibility. He also kept weight transition in character strokes to modest levels, enabling the face to be used at relatively small sizes – an unusual asset for a formal script. Marnie’s capital letters are expansive designs with flowing swash strokes that wrap affectionately around adjoining lowercase letters. The design easily captures the spontaneous qualities of hand-rendered brush lettering.

Gérard Mariscalchi is a self-made designer. Born in Southern France of a Spanish mother and an Italian father, he has worked as a mechanic, salesman, pilot, college teacher – even a poet (with poetry being the worst-paying of these professions, he reports.) “Throughout all this, the backbone of my career has always been design,” Mariscalchi says. “I’ve been drawing since I was five, but it wasn’t until I was twenty-four that I learned that my hobby could also help me earn a living.” It was about this same time that Mariscalchi fell in love with type. He studied the designs of masters like Excoffon, Usherwood and Frutiger, as well as the work of calligraphers and type designers such as Plantin, Cochin and Dürer. With such an eclectic background, it’s no surprise that Mariscalchi’s typeface designs are inspired by many sources. Baylac and Evita reflect the style of the art nouveau and art deco periods, while Marnie was created as an homage to the great Lithuanian calligrapher Villu Toots. However, the touch of French elegance and distinction Mariscalchi brings to his work is all his own. Baylac Who says thirteen is an unlucky number? Three capitals and ten lowercase letters from a poster by L. Baylac, a relatively obscure Art Nouveau designer, served as the foundation for this typeface. The finished design has lush curves that give the face drama without diminishing its versatility. On the practical side, Baylac’s condensed proportions make it perfect for those situations where there’s a lot to say and not much room in which to say it Evita Mariscalchi based the design of Evita on hand lettering he found in a restaurant menu, and considers this typeface one of his most difficult design challenges. “The main problem was to render the big weight difference between the thin and the thick strokes without creating printing problems at small point sizes,” he says. Unlike most scripts, Evita is upright, with the design characteristics of a serif typeface. Mariscalchi named the face for a close friend. The end result is a charming design that is light, airy, and slightly sassy. Marnie Based on Art Nouveau calligraphic lettering, Marnie is elegant, inviting, and absolutely charming. Mariscalchi paid special attention to letter shapes and proportions to guarantee high levels of character legibility. He also kept weight transition in character strokes to modest levels, enabling the face to be used at relatively small sizes – an unusual asset for a formal script. Marnie’s capital letters are expansive designs with flowing swash strokes that wrap affectionately around adjoining lowercase letters. The design easily captures the spontaneous qualities of hand-rendered brush lettering.

Gérard Mariscalchi is a self-made designer. Born in Southern France of a Spanish mother and an Italian father, he has worked as a mechanic, salesman, pilot, college teacher – even a poet (with poetry being the worst-paying of these professions, he reports.) “Throughout all this, the backbone of my career has always been design,” Mariscalchi says. “I’ve been drawing since I was five, but it wasn’t until I was twenty-four that I learned that my hobby could also help me earn a living.” It was about this same time that Mariscalchi fell in love with type. He studied the designs of masters like Excoffon, Usherwood and Frutiger, as well as the work of calligraphers and type designers such as Plantin, Cochin and Dürer. With such an eclectic background, it’s no surprise that Mariscalchi’s typeface designs are inspired by many sources. Baylac and Evita reflect the style of the art nouveau and art deco periods, while Marnie was created as an homage to the great Lithuanian calligrapher Villu Toots. However, the touch of French elegance and distinction Mariscalchi brings to his work is all his own. Baylac Who says thirteen is an unlucky number? Three capitals and ten lowercase letters from a poster by L. Baylac, a relatively obscure Art Nouveau designer, served as the foundation for this typeface. The finished design has lush curves that give the face drama without diminishing its versatility. On the practical side, Baylac’s condensed proportions make it perfect for those situations where there’s a lot to say and not much room in which to say it Evita Mariscalchi based the design of Evita on hand lettering he found in a restaurant menu, and considers this typeface one of his most difficult design challenges. “The main problem was to render the big weight difference between the thin and the thick strokes without creating printing problems at small point sizes,” he says. Unlike most scripts, Evita is upright, with the design characteristics of a serif typeface. Mariscalchi named the face for a close friend. The end result is a charming design that is light, airy, and slightly sassy. Marnie Based on Art Nouveau calligraphic lettering, Marnie is elegant, inviting, and absolutely charming. Mariscalchi paid special attention to letter shapes and proportions to guarantee high levels of character legibility. He also kept weight transition in character strokes to modest levels, enabling the face to be used at relatively small sizes – an unusual asset for a formal script. Marnie’s capital letters are expansive designs with flowing swash strokes that wrap affectionately around adjoining lowercase letters. The design easily captures the spontaneous qualities of hand-rendered brush lettering.

In the course of the re-vitalization of its Typoart typeface inventory, Elsner+Flake decided in 2006 to offer the “Kis Antiqua” by Hildegard Korger, in a re-worked form and with an extended sortiment, as an OpenType Pro-version. After consultation with Hildegard Korger, Elsner+Flake tasked the Leipzig type designer Erhard Kaiser with the execution of the re-design and expansion of the sortiment. Detlef Schäfer writes in “Fotosatzschriften Type-Design+Schrifthersteller”, VEB Fachbuchverlag Leipzig, 1989: No other printing type has ever generated as far-reaching a controversy as this typeface which Jan Tschichold called the most beautiful of all the old Antiqua types. For a long time, it was thought to have been designed by Anton Janson. In 1720 a large number of the original types were displayed in the catalog of the „Ehrhardische Gycery“ (Ehrhardt Typefoundry) in Leipzig. Recently, thanks to the research performed by Beatrice Warde and especially György Haimann, it has been proven unambiguously that the originator of this typeface was Miklós (Nicholas) Tótfalusi Kis (pronounced „Kisch“) who was born in 1650 in the Hungarian town of Tótfal. His calvinistic church had sent him to the Netherlands to oversee the printing of a Hungarian language bible. He studied printing and punch cutting and earned special recognition for his Armenian and Hebrew types. Upon his return to Hungary, an emergency situation forced him to sell several of his matrice sets to the Ehrhardt Typefoundry in Leipzig. In Hungary he printed from his own typefaces, but religious tensions arose between him and one of his church elders. He died at an early age in 1702. The significant characteristics of the “Dutch Antiqua” by Kis are the larger body size, relatively small lower case letters and strong upper case letters, which show clearly defined contrasts in the stroke widths. The “Kis Antiqua” is less elegant than the Garamond, rather somewhat austere in a calvinistic way, but its expression is unique and full of tension. The upper and lower case serifs are only slightly concave, and the upper case O as well as the lower case o have, for the first time, a vertical axis. In the replica, sensitively and respectfully (responsibly) drawn by Hildegard Korger, these characteristics of this pleasantly readable and beautiful face have been well met. For Typoart it was clear that this typeface has to appear under its only true name “Kis Antiqua.” It will be used primarily in book design. Elsner+Flake added two headline weights, which are available as a separate font family Kis Antiqua Now TH Pro Designer: Miklós (Nicholas) Tótfalusi Kis, 1686 Hildegard Korger, 1986-1988 Erhard Kaiser, 2008

In the course of the re-vitalization of its Typoart typeface inventory, Elsner+Flake decided in 2006 to offer the “Kis Antiqua” by Hildegard Korger, in a re-worked form and with an extended sortiment, as an OpenType Pro-version. After consultation with Hildegard Korger, Elsner+Flake tasked the Leipzig type designer Erhard Kaiser with the execution of the re-design and expansion of the sortiment. Detlef Schäfer writes in “Fotosatzschriften Type-Design+Schrifthersteller”, VEB Fachbuchverlag Leipzig, 1989: No other printing type has ever generated as far-reaching a controversy as this typeface which Jan Tschichold called the most beautiful of all the old Antiqua types. For a long time, it was thought to have been designed by Anton Janson. In 1720 a large number of the original types were displayed in the catalog of the „Ehrhardische Gycery“ (Ehrhardt Typefoundry) in Leipzig. Recently, thanks to the research performed by Beatrice Warde and especially György Haimann, it has been proven unambiguously that the originator of this typeface was Miklós (Nicholas) Tótfalusi Kis (pronounced Kisch) who was born in 1650 in the Hungarian town of Tótfal. His calvinistic church had sent him to the Netherlands to oversee the printing of a Hungarian language bible. He studied printing and punch cutting and earned special recognition for his Armenian and Hebrew types. Upon his return to Hungary, an emergency situation forced him to sell several of his matrice sets to the Ehrhardt Typefoundry in Leipzig. In Hungary he printed from his own typefaces, but religious tensions arose between him and one of his church elders. He died at an early age in 1702. The significant characteristics of the “Dutch Antiqua” by Kis are the larger body size, relatively small lower case letters and strong upper case letters, which show clearly defined contrasts in the stroke widths. The “Kis Antiqua” is less elegant than the Garamond, rather somewhat austere in a calvinistic way, but its expression is unique and full of tension. The upper and lower case serifs are only slightly concave, and the upper case O as well as the lower case o have, for the first time, a vertical axis. In the replica, sensitively and respectfully (responsibly) drawn by Hildegard Korger, these characteristics of this pleasantly readable and beautiful face have been well met. For Typoart it was clear that this typeface has to appear under its only true name “Kis Antiqua.” It will be used primarily in book design. Elsner+Flake added these two headline weights, which are available besides a separate font family Kis Antiqua Now TB Pro. Designer: Miklós (Nicholas) Tótfalusi Kis, 1686 Hildegard Korger, 1986-1988 Erhard Kaiser, 2008