Le Griffe is the work of French designer Andre-Michel Lubac. A superb calligraphic script, Le Griffe includes two fonts of separate alternates and swash characters. In contrast to its more reserved lowercase, Le Griffe's capitals are quite lively- especially those with swashes and flourishes. With Le Griffe, Lubac has imitated the skilled penmanship of free-flowing calligraphy in digital form. Now, instead of writing out beautiful text by hand, you can set it quickly and easily with this masterful type!

Litera was designed in 1983 by Michael Neugebauer, who used the same strict constructed design found in his typeface Circulus. In its figures are the clear geometric forms of the circle, triangle and rectangle, which were also the main forms of Bauhaus designs. The overall look of Litera is modern, clear and light. Distinguishing characteristics are the openness and the e and P and the particularly long cross stroke of the G. The cool Litera is best for middle length texts and headlines. Similar typefaces include Futura from Paul Renner and Avenir from Adrian Frutiger.

Newly remastered, this elegant font features over 770 characters. P22 Pouty Pro is a light contemporary italic, including a large set of ligatures and alternate characters, offering plenty of options for customization. Award winning commercial lettering artist, Michael Clark had noticed that italic, and its limitless variants, is more utilitarian than other calligraphic styles and Pouty—named for his youngest daughter Jennifer, a sulky beauty—is one of his favorite variations. Perfect for wedding materials, fashion editorial, packaging design, product labels and anywhere a sophisticated calligraphic style is desired.

Steinweiss Script began its journey towards daylight when Michael Doret was asked by Taschen Publishing to do cover lettering for the huge commemorative edition they were putting together on the work of Alex Steinweiss—“The Inventor of the Modern Album Cover”. The lettering was to be created to appear similar to the famous “Steinweiss Scrawl” the calligraphy that Steinweiss had used on countless album covers. While designing this piece of lettering, Michael realized that there was great potential for a font that was designed in the spirit of that famous “scrawl”. Through his contacts at Taschen Publishing, he was fortunate enough to be able to contact the Steinweiss family, and get the official Steinweiss approval to proceed with his “Steinweiss Script” project. Michael decided that in addition to giving the font his name as an homage, that he would donate a portion of the proceeds from the sale of this font to the man himself: Alex Steinweiss. Read more about the background of Steinweiss Script in Steven Heller’s article in Imprint. Steinweiss Script is a family of fonts in three weights: Light, Medium, and Bold. Additionally, within each weight there are three variations: Simple, Fancy, and Titling. These variations relate to the size/ratio of the caps to the lowercase, the complexity of those caps, and the size of the ascenders/descenders on the lowercase characters. These variations add usefulness to the font, making it accessible not just for headlines, but for longer passages of text as well. For a better understanding of its unique features please download The Steinweiss Script Users Guide from the Gallery section. PLEASE NOTE: the three Steinweiss Script fonts are cross-platform fonts which depend to some extent on certain advanced OpenType features, therefore they can be used to their full potential only with programs that support those features. When setting Steinweiss Script one should almost ALWAYS select the “Standard Ligatures" and “Contextual Alternates” buttons in your OpenType palette. See the “Read Me First!” file in the Gallery section.

Papillon Woodcuts is a digital revival of an ornate alphabet by French engraver Jean Michel Papillon dating back to 1760, when engraving was very fashionable in France. Each letter is displayed with a different themed background, such as a ship at sea; a fancy table topped with a bounty of fruits; flying birds; a parasol with flowers; playful cherubs; rich textured drapes and tapestries; and many more. These woodcut initials are especially beautiful when used at the beginning of a paragraph as in olden texts.

The main idea behind creating Monly typeface was to combine playfulness with a strong letter construction backbone, so all the letters would stand tall and firm, but not to lose the playfulness. Like people, who grow up but try to save their inner child. By doing so and combining all this, the typeface achieves a great readability and appealing look. Monly font suits best for logos, headlines and small text blocks, but can also be used for big text blocks if the style suits the purpose.

Stone and steel FS Benjamin is a flared serif typeface designed by Stuart de Rozario. Consisting of 12 styles ranging from Light, Book, Regular, Medium, SemiBold and Bold with Italics it has clear, delicate letterforms, punctuated with brutal chiselled angles. With a pure and crafted feel to the forms the typeface has traditional roots but has been designed to work in a contemporary setting. Archetypal proportions in terms of x-height to cap height and ascender to descender ratio, allow the typeface to feel familiar and be legible in all platforms. Delicate brutalism Inspired by the contrasts of London and named after Big Ben, FS Benjamin was designed by Stuart de Rozario and founder, Jason Smith. Walking around London Jason was inspired by the juxtaposition of the old and the new. Glass and steel architecture can often be found amongst traditional signage and coats of arms seen around the City. These surroundings sparked an idea to create a modern design based on an alphabet that would traditionally be carved from stone. “Much of the typography we see today is so similar. I thought what if we created a typeface with traditional roots but modernised it to sit amongst the punk and noise of the streets of London? Old with new. Business with busyness. This is what London is all about.” Jason Smith

Trajan The original template for this one-weight, all-caps font was the inscription on Trajan’s Column, carved in AD 113 to celebrate the emperor Trajan’s victory in the Dacian Wars. College student Jason Smith copied the stone lettering from the cast on display in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. In Roman times, the signmaker would paint letters onto stone with a wide brush for the stone mason to chisel out later. The signwriter would end each stroke with a flick of his brush, which the mason would also carve into the stone. Ecce (as they would have said in Rome): the serif was born. Hand-crafted “I first drew this typeface when I was 17,” says Jason. “I drew it with a very sharp 9H pencil on polydraw film. “Then, using a Rotring pen, I inked the letters in and scraped back the serifs so they were perfectly sharp. These letters were then reduced on a PMT camera. I’d designed my first typeface, although it wasn’t digitised till much later.” Digitised Years after Jason had drawn the original typeface, its transfer into digital form made further refinements necessary. The serifs and weights needed thickening slightly, creating a crisp, new version whose delicate elegance is best appreciated in larger sizes. A classically-inspired font, timeless and perfectly-proportioned, to reflect the refinement of premium brands.

Malden Sans is a mischievous grotesque sans serif with charming details that gives designers a solid typographic voice. It was created by Michele Patanè with regular and condensed widths, as a utilitarian typeface family for print and digital environments. It was originally designed as part of a type system for cinema magazines, and embodies the devil-may care attitude of the silver screen. Designer Michele Patanè looked back to an earlier era of typography to create the typeface, embracing unusual details, rather than ironing them out. “There is a very naive way of using typography in the 30s and 40s, something not as clean as how it’s used in the late 50s and 60s when everything passed through a rationalisation of the typographic palette,” he explains. “In film magazines you can still see a bit of roughness, and I like that.” This is a design that’s desperate to be used in editorial environments, and has been created to stand up to lower quality paper. It would be equally at home on posters, packaging, and even in digital environments where designers are looking for something more expressive than another geometric sans serif. Malden Sans includes a Normal and Condensed range, with 7 weights in the normal and 6 in the Condensed, both including italics.

DaiVernon is based on the handwriting of card magician extraordinaire Dai Vernon. Known as "The Professor", Vernon was a beloved expert in sleight-of-hand and card magic. These fonts are based on the penmanship in his notebooks from the 1920s, which feature almost no lowercase letters. DaiVernon Direct is based on what appears to be his hastier style, while DaiVernon Misdirect is based on his neater hand. Numerous OpenType bonus glyphs, contextual alternates and discretionary ligatures help to create the feel of his handwriting. Thanks go to Michael Albright, David Ben, and Gene Matsuura for helping to provide access to Vernon's notebooks.

Anlinear is part of a series of constructed typographic experiments from the young Swiss designer Michael Parson. In the Anlinear family, which contains three separate weights, Parson has successfully created a fabulous display of alphabets out of the sole arrangement of lines at right angles to each other. The letters in this face virtually groove with the beat as you set them in text. Like a musical score, they provide a fantastic look just right for your next flyer. This family of fonts looks best when set in larger point sizes, in headlines or other display settings.

Drop Caps happen. They started off life as decorated initials way back when in the days of illuminated manuscripts. Then printing came and they became the work of the rubricators and then somewhere soon after printing began, at least by the 1490’s, they were printed directly into the text. This then is a collection of over a hundred glyphs from that closing decade of the Incunabula period. All of them are based on examples found in the works printed by Michael Wenssler in Basel. This font also contains a few useful pointing hands and a set of spacing characters.

The font was inspired by the persistent demands of editors for scripts which actually looked like real handwriting, a lot of historical fiction projects and a love of maps. While making a map for a prequel to Treasure Island I decided to make a font from the lettering of some Caribbean maps of the period. The glyphs are all hand drawn vector outlines which although very legible and consistent in style carry the variation and irregularity you expect from handwriting. This font has been featured on maps for books by authors such as Peter V. Brett, Mark Lawrence and Michael Crichton.

Ned Std. is part of a series of typographic experiments from the young Swiss designer Michael Parson. Using a wide, horizontal hexagonal grid, Parson created the system of letters that make up this font. Text set in Ned Regular takes on a modular, honeycomb-like appearance. For an interesting effect, try overlapping individual letters, or use a few letters together as elements in a logo. A great companion face to Ned Std. is Linotype's Hexatype Bold. Both Ned Std. and Hexatype Bold have been included in the Take Type 5 collection, along with eight further constructions from Parson."

Hexatype is part of a series of typographic experiments from the young Swiss designer Michael Parson. In this font, Parson has created an intriguing system of lines that form into letters, all based off of a hexagonal grid. Text set in Hexatype takes on an interesting honeycomb-like appearance. For a different effect, try overlapping individual letters, or use a few of Hexatype's letters together as elements in a logo. A good companion to Hexatype is Linotype's Ned Std. These two fonts, as well as eight more experimental designs by Parson, are included in the Take Type 5 collection."

A roughened and worn version of Daily Tabloid JNL was originally created as a non-exclusive custom font for a client. The design emulates the look of old letterpress wood type and has now been released commercially as Regional News JNL; available in both regular and oblique versions. A special acknowledgement goes to Michael Hagemann of Font Mesa Fonts who partnered with Jeff Levine Fonts for the original project. His creativity and skill resulted in the textured look needed for the typeface. For some beautiful antique typefaces or fine text face collections, please visit Font Mesa Fonts.

ITC True Grit is the work of American designer Michael Stacey, a bold distinctive typeface. An enthusiastic collector of vintage graphic design, Stacey says that he is especially intrigued by lettering styles from the days when most display typography was done by hand. The style for ITC True Grit was taken from the 1930s and updated for digital imagine. Stacey say his goal was to retain the casual feel of handlettering yet impart the crisp finish of current precision typography." ITC True Grit is a hybrid design, a cross between German Blackletter and brush script with a hint of Jugendstil thrown in."

Michael Gills, formerly a resident designer at Letraset, created the Fling typeface in 1995. Fling's letterforms are based on the Ronde --or round--script style from France. The design includes intricate and generous capital letters, which are contrasted with a more reserved lowercase letters. This allows for a sophisticated and elegant appearance in text. Fling's letterforms are highly legible for those of a script face, and it is a typeface with many uses. Aside from short amounts of running text, Fling's capital letters serve well as initials. In the Opentype font are extra ligatures and alternative letterforms thatoffer expanded typesetting possibilities.

One of the most enduring type styles of the Art Deco era is Huxley Vertical. Its clean lines and stylish appeal have transcended changing times and tastes. Many typefaces have been inspired by the original, including the model used to create this font. The design was found in the book "Lettering and Alphabets", first published in 1946 by J. Albert Cavanagh. By re-drawing it from scratch, the missing numerals, punctuation, special characters and accents were added. Hagemann JNL and its oblique version are named in honor of one of Jeff Levine's friends within the type design community -- Michael Hagemann of Font Mesa.

Dead Space is a science fiction/horror media franchise created by Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey, developed by Visceral Games, and published and owned by Electronic Arts. The franchise's chronology is not presented in a linear format; each installment in the Dead Space franchise is a continuation or addition to a continuing storyline, with sections of the storyline presented in prequels or sequels, sometimes presented in other media from the originating video game series, which includes two films and several comic books and novels. I created this font by redrawing the alphabet in which the Death Space alien language is written.

Technobaby is a funky futuristic font done with modular letterforms. This typeface arose from playing around with the basic rounded rectangle shape. Jason wanted to see how many different letters he could create by simply changing the locations of the slots cut into the rectangles. Overall it lends the font a very cohesive and unique look. Get your "mod" on with Technobaby!

Kangaroo FS Joey was the offspring of a project with Rudd Studio to develop a logotype for an online streaming TV service, in 2008. While under wraps, the secret project was code-named Kangaroo. The logotype led to a second project, to design a corporate typeface for the service. It was the first big project Fernando Mello had worked on with Jason Smith. “Like any designer who just joined a team, I was very excited about it, drawing and sketching lots of ideas. I remember Jason and I experimenting with lots of possibilities, for both the logo and the typeface.” Online As the font for a Spotify-style, internet-based service, FS Joey needed to be highly legible on-screen, including at very small sizes. There had to be a range of weights, and they’d have to work well in print, too. It was also important that it felt corporate, not too quirky, while still having a strong character of its own. Quirkiest “We designed three weights specifically for use on the Web,” says Jason Smith. “There was the usual fight between me and my team. I wanted at least one identifiable letter that was a quirk. As always I went straight for the lowercase ‘g’, and it was drawn numerous times with lots of variation. I got the quirkiest one accepted by the client.” But, later in 2009, the Competition Commission blocked Project Kangaroo, and Fontsmith were left with a couple of weights of an as yet unused font. From Kangaroo, Joey was born. A favourite “Straight away, people started to notice the typeface,” says Jason. “I can take the credit for pushing the art direction and standing up for the quirks. But it was Fernando who was the key to pulling it all together and adding his own distinct flavour. Now it’s one of my favourite designs in our library.” Fresh and friendly, geometric and energetic, Joey is available in five weights, all with italics, all finely-tuned for both screen and print.

Kangaroo FS Joey was the offspring of a project with Rudd Studio to develop a logotype for an online streaming TV service, in 2008. While under wraps, the secret project was code-named Kangaroo. The logotype led to a second project, to design a corporate typeface for the service. It was the first big project Fernando Mello had worked on with Jason Smith. “Like any designer who just joined a team, I was very excited about it, drawing and sketching lots of ideas. I remember Jason and I experimenting with lots of possibilities, for both the logo and the typeface.” Online As the font for a Spotify-style, internet-based service, FS Joey needed to be highly legible on-screen, including at very small sizes. There had to be a range of weights, and they’d have to work well in print, too. It was also important that it felt corporate, not too quirky, while still having a strong character of its own. Quirkiest “We designed three weights specifically for use on the Web,” says Jason Smith. “There was the usual fight between me and my team. I wanted at least one identifiable letter that was a quirk. As always I went straight for the lowercase ‘g’, and it was drawn numerous times with lots of variation. I got the quirkiest one accepted by the client.” But, later in 2009, the Competition Commission blocked Project Kangaroo, and Fontsmith were left with a couple of weights of an as yet unused font. From Kangaroo, Joey was born. A favourite “Straight away, people started to notice the typeface,” says Jason. “I can take the credit for pushing the art direction and standing up for the quirks. But it was Fernando who was the key to pulling it all together and adding his own distinct flavour. Now it’s one of my favourite designs in our library.” Fresh and friendly, geometric and energetic, Joey is available in five weights, all with italics, all finely-tuned for both screen and print.

Jean Evans' interest in type design dates back to her third-grade fascination with fancy script writing. Years later, work at a sign-painting school she found in the Yellow Pages® cemented her relationship with letterforms. Evans went on to study with master calligraphers and type designers, including the likes of Donald Jackson, Hermann Zapf and Matthew Carter. Evans' designs have been exhibited and collected around the globe, and her distinctive calligraphic style has been lauded by leading trade organizations, annuals and publications. Hatmaker, one of Evans' more popular typefaces, was originally developed for the Boston-based broadcast design firm of the same name. Inspiration for the design came from Ben Shahn's famous hand-constructed alphabet. Shahn's alphabet, however, was limited to capital letters. Daunted by the idea of designing a lowercase that would measure up to Shahn's capitals, I developed a second set of caps-simple, quirky, yet almost classic-to work as 'lowercase' with the Shahn-like caps," explains Evans. Mixing the two in Hatmaker, creates a lively interplay of light and dark."

Calypso I (Italian) draws its inspiration from type founders' plentiful show-off-letters, which were typical on title pages and lithographs in the early 19th century. It borrows luscious details from these but inherits a stiff modern backbone from its parent, Calypso E (Egyptian). Within the Calypso type family all fonts share the same dimensions and work together consistently. Calypso I supports many languages and includes, for example, four sets of basic numerals, circled numbers, alternative characters, case sensitive forms and dingbats. Give it a go on drop caps and headlines or even set short paragraphs with it. It loves colour and effects.

Wade Sans Light was designed by Paul Hickson and Key Characters and appeared in the ITC library in 1990. The basic forms of the font are those of a constructed sans serif, as seen in the circular O and triangular A. The low x-height of the lower case letters make this font particularly reserved and graceful and the high ascenders give it a certain elegance. The high, wide capitals need a lot of space and dominate the overall look of this font. Wade Sans Light is reminiscent of the elegant cabarets of the 1920s and 30s.

Linotype Salamander is a part of the Take Type Library, selected from the contestants of Linotype’s International Digital Type Design Contests of 1994 and 1997. Designed by German artist Michael Struller, the font seems to be composed of strokes and curves jointed together to form characters. Yet Salamander also looks like a handwriting font, in part because of its slight lean to the right. The font contains four basic weights, from regular to demibold, and two particularly heavy double-weights. Linotype Salamander is a light and lively font, particularly good for short texts of point size 10 and up or, in its heavier weights, for headlines and displays.

Songlines is based upon a pen-drawn script drawn by Michael Harvey to illustrate a poem by Johannes Thurman. The expressive and rough-edged letterforms of Songlines do not have any lowercase characters. Instead, alternative uppercase characters occupy their positions. By using a mixture of upper-case and lowercase characters, text can be given a very lively and vigorous character. For example, the two versions of L are designed to overlap and interact whichever way round they are used. The augmented Songlines Plus version, has many alternative characters and ligatures added together with Opentype features to enable their automatic substitution where the application in which they are used permits.

Dead Space is a science fiction/horror media franchise created by Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey, developed by Visceral Games, and published and owned by Electronic Arts. The franchise's chronology is not presented in a linear format; each installment in the Dead Space franchise is a continuation or addition to a continuing storyline, with sections of the storyline presented in prequels or sequels, sometimes presented in other media from the originating video game series, which includes two films and several comic books and novels. This font is related to the video game Death Space, I redrawn this font to make it a font with a minimum character set.

A really, really long time ago, I watched a movie called ‘The China Syndrome’ (starring Jane Fonda, Jack Lemon and Michael Douglas). It was one of those disaster movies that were quite popular at the time (I also recall airports, alien viruses and skyscraper fires). Anyway, when I finished this font, I suddenly (and quite inexplicably) remembered that movie, so I named this font after it. China Syndrome is a legible brush font - ideal for your product packaging and halloween posters. Maybe use it for a metal album cover, a book about nuclear disasters or, dunno, the logo of your really strong coffee brand. Whatever. Just enjoy!

Morocco is a round, curvaceous font from Swiss designer Michael Parson. Many of the letterforms in Morocco are inspired by the Modern Greek alphabet. Five of the lowercase letters have additional ascenders/descenders that are not typical in the Roman alphabet (h, n, s, u, x). This experimentation continues into the uppercase as well; many capital letters in this font have been bequeathed with ascender or descender-like elements, and some capital letters, like the Q", only come up to the x-height of the lowercase letters. This experiment in type design is one of ten from Parson that has been included in the Take Type 5 collection from Linotype GmbH."

The Jantze font is a project undertaken by Dan Bailey of Fontosaurus and Michael Jantze, creator of the nationally-syndicated comic strip, The Norm. All their royalties from the font will go to The Lance Armstrong Foundation. For those that have been living under a rock for the last five years, Lance is a professional bike racer that overcame advanced testicular cancer to not only come back to his sport, but to dominate its premiere event, the Tour de France. In climbing to the top of his sport, he has become a legend among cyclists and a beacon of hope for those battling cancer and their families. His foundation provides financial grants to researchers working to improve our odds against the disease, individuals stricken with cancer, and survivors of the disease that are advocates for survivorship issues in their communities. Michael Jantze and Dan Bailey would like you to consider the quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson that brought us to this project: "The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well. We hope that you will help us help Lance Armstrong's legacy be more than that of just sports legend. We hope that you will help those that may someday help you as much as we hope that you will never have to suffer the ravages of cancer. We hope.

I am reading a great book by David Mitchell, called Number 9 Dream. One of the characters is called Buntaro, so I decided to call my new inky font after him. Like the book, Buntaro is quite unusual: it has no real baseline, comes with some strange characters, feels familiar, but surprises you nonetheless. It was made with a broken bamboo satay-skewer, Chinese ink and a lot of patience. Buntaro comes with a wealth of diacritics.

Conga Brava is the work of type designer Michael Harvey, a combination of the high-minded, purist letterforms of revivalist, modern calligraphers with the mundane, even crude, lettering of warehouse stenciling. The resulting lyrical yet utilitarian forms have a visually exciting graphic effect, which Harvey has frequently used in his book jacket designs. Like his other typefaces, Ellington, Strayhorn, and Mezz, Harvey named his design after a jazz classic, Conga Brava", by Duke Ellington and his trombonist Juan Tizol. The rolling rhythm, polished swing, and stacatto brass treatment of the tune suits the look of this sassy roman design and even more so, its stencil mate. When you need a typeface that radiates sound and motion, think Conga Brava."

Whenever I've stayed in Munich my friend Michael Bundscherer and I go on a typographical expedition. When we talk about that, we remember the bygone world of sign painter. On one of the facades of a furniture shop in Munich, you can discover the lettering of the name in golden letters. This one convinced us because of the simple elegance Art Deco. These letters on the facade are in any case the character set, which forms the basis of this document. The missing (especially the lowercase letters and the numbers) were modeled. The "OPEN" called version tries to replicate the 3-D effect. The font is particularly suitable for shorter texts and headlines.

The original inspiration for Blue Parrot came from a short scene in the classic film Casablanca. For just a few seconds, the exterior of Ferrari's Blue Parrot night club is shown, complete with a wonderful hand-lettered sign... all in capital letters. Blue Parrot JNL was originally released in 2006, and it wasn't long before a few people noted that the font would also look good with a lower case alphabet. The idea of adding in lower case kicked around for a couple of years until Jeff Levine finally completed a revision of the font. In this version there's also an expanded character set thanks to the creative input of Michael Hagemann of Font Mesa.