Monotype Bembo is generally regarded as one of the most handsome revivals of Aldus Manutius' 15th century roman type, but the original had no italic counterpart. The story is told that Stanley Morison commissioned Alfred Fairbank, a renowned calligrapher, to create the first italic for Bembo, which was released as metal fonts in 1929. Alfred Fairbank, however, claimed that he drew the design as an independent project and then sold his drawings to Monotype. According to him, the statement has been made that I was asked to design an italic for the Bembo roman. This is not so. Had the request been made, the italic type produced would have been different." Whichever version you believe, it was obvious that Fairbank's design - while undeniably beautiful - was not harmonious with Bembo roman. A second, more conventional italic was eventually drawn and added to the Bembo family. Fairbank's first design, which was based on the work of sixteenth-century writing master Ludovico degli Arrighi, managed to have a modest life of its own as a standalone font of metal type. It never made the leap into phototype fonts, however, and the face could have been lost, were it not for Robin Nicholas, Monotype Imaging's Head of Typography in the United Kingdom, and Carl Crossgrove, a senior designer for Monotype Imaging in the US. Nicholas and Crossgrove used the original drawings for Fairbank as the starting point for a new digital design, but this was only the beginning. They improved spacing, added subtle kerning and optimized the design for digital imaging. In addition, Nicholas created an alternative set of lowercase letters, fancy and swash capitals and enough alternate characters to personalize virtually any design project. By the time his work was complete, Nicholas and Crossgrove had created a small type family that included Fairbank, a revived version of the earlier metal font, and Fairbank Chancery, a more calligraphic rendition of the design. An additional suite of ornate caps, elegant ligatures, and beginning and ending letters accompanies both fonts, as does a full complement of lowercase swash characters. Now, instead of a failed Bembo italic, Fairbank emerges in its true glory: a sumptuous, elegant design that will lend a note of grace to holiday greetings, invitations, and any application where its Italianate beauty is called for."

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

If you're in need of a sophisticated sans serif font, look no further than type designer Jason Castle’s Carisma (Paul Shaw in HOW magazine). Carisma, a CastleType Original, combines the elegance of classic capitals, the simplicity of clean-cut, geometric lowercase letters and the warmth of sensuous curves, subtle contrasts and sensitively tapered terminals, making it the perfect typeface for an understated, modern, sophisticated look. Available in two styles: Carisma Classic (the original), and Carisma Gothic, plus Carisma Inline.

This set of initial letters was inspired from French renaissance decorated letters. It is a typical pattern, one among dozen quite similar, but this one was in use in Paris, unchanged, for centuries, and was still in use in the beginning of 1900s. This explains the difference between I and J, U and V. These characters were engraved years after the original set. Our font was inspired from a late 1800s publication. It can be used as well with Humane fonts (like our 1543 Humane Janson or 1592 GLC Garamond) as with modern fonts like our 1820 Modern or 1906 French News.

ITC Ronda, with its constructed forms, was designed by Herb Lubalin in 1970. Behind its figures lie the clear geometric forms of the circle, triangle, and rectangle. The typeface presents a clear, modern look in any application. Distinguishing characteristics are the shapes of the upper right third of the capital B, P and R as well as the half-circle form of the descender of the Q. ITC Ronda is similar to Michael Neugebauer's Litera; both fonts display styles characteristic of the Bauhaus' work. "

Tisdall Script is based upon the brush-drawn script lettering of Hans Tisdall, who was the designer of many distinctive lettered book jackets for Jonathan Cape in the 1950s. Michael Harvey, also a designer of lettered book jackets, long admired Tisdall’s style and so, with the blessing of his widow, designed this typographic tribute. The augmented Tisdall Script Plus version, has many alternative characters and ligatures, together with Opentype features, to enable their automatic substitution where the application in which they are used permits.

The Ehrhardt name indicates that this typeface is derived from the roman and italic typefaces of stout Dutch character that the Ehrhardt foundry in Leipzig showed in a late-seventeenth-century specimen book. The designer is unknown, although some historians believe it was the Hungarian Nicholas Kis. Monotype recut the typeface for modern publishers in 1937 to 1938. Ehrhardt has a clean regularity and smooth finish that promote readability, as well as a slight degree of condensation, especially in the italic, that conserves space. Ehrhardt is a fine text face, especially for books.

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.

The Kimchi font had its starting point in the making of the film "Cloud Atlas", based on the novel by David Mitchell and directed by Lana & Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer. A first version of Kimchi was created for "Papa Song" – an underground fast food restaurant in a futuristic Neo Seoul in the year 2144. It was used for the menus, advertisement and packaging. Kimchi was later further developed to become a useable typeface: it works for headlines, street art stencils and of course as logo font for korean fast food restaurants.

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.

The impetus behind Felbridge was both ambitious and highly practical: to develop an ideal online" typeface for use in web pages and electronic media. Robin Nicholas, the family's designer, explains, "I wanted a straightforward sans serif with strong, clear letterforms which would not degrade when viewed in low resolution environments." Not surprisingly, the design also performs exceptionally well in traditional print applications. In 2001, to achieve his goal, Nicholas adjusted the interior strokes of complex characters like the M and W to prevent on-screen pixel build-up and improve legibility. Characters with round strokes were drawn with squared proportions to take full advantage of screen real estate. In addition, small serifs were added to characters like the I, j and l to improve both legibility and readability. "The result," according to Nicholas, "is a typeface with a slightly humanist feel, economical in use and outstanding legibility - even at relatively small point sizes. Most sans serif typefaces have italics based on the simple "sloped Roman" principle, but italic forms for Felbridge have been drawn in the tradition of being visually lighter than their related Roman fonts, providing a strong contrast when the italic is used for emphasis in Roman text. The italic letter shapes also have a slightly calligraphic flavor and distinctive "hooked" strokes that improve fluency. Felbridge is available in four weights of Roman - Light, Regular, Bold and Extra Bold - with complementary italics for the Regular and Bold designs. The result is a remarkably versatile typeface family, equally comfortable in magazine text copy or in display work for advertising and product branding. As a branding typeface, Felbridge works in all environments from traditional hardcopy materials to web design, and is even suitable for general office use. As part of a corporate identity, this no-nonsense typeface family will be a distinctive and effective communications tool." Felbridge™ font field guide including best practices, font pairings and alternatives.

Hassan is a traditional-style Arabic text face designed by Hassan Sobhi Mourad, an experienced calligrapher and teacher of the art and first produced by the Linotype Design Studio (U.K.) as a PostScript font in 1993. An individual Naskh style, Hassan cleverly combines elegant proportions, echoing an inscriptional Thuluth in its tall vertical stems and deeply rounded final jim and ain. The effect of verticality is enhanced by the tense, reined-in kerning strokes of ra and waw, the well-poised lam-alif, and the compactly drawn ligatures. The broad-band strokes of Hassan Bold smooth some of the angularity and relax the tension apparent in the Light. The traditional-style ligatures are rendered with an easy flow. Because of the economical character count, Hassan Light and Bold text may be headed by the compact titling styles (Hisham, Mariam) as well as designs like Ahmed or Kufi which answer to the inscriptional qualities of Hassan. In addition to other uses, Hassan would be particularly suited to document text-setting. Hassan’s two OpenType weights include Latin glyphs from Janson Text Roman, and Janson Text Bold, respectively, inside the font files, allowing a single font to set text in both most Western European and Arabic languages. The OpenType glyph ranges incorporate Basic Latin and the Arabic character set, which supports Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. The fonts include tabular and proportional Arabic, Persian, and Urdu numerals, as well as a set of tabular European (Latin) numerals.

San Andre is a sport script font. Drawn and created by Mans Greback in 2021, this logotype lettering has a distinct retro style and a strong vintage personality, with a combination of soft brushes and strict backbones. Use multiple underscores to make swashes of different lengths. Examples: Andreas______ Athletics_______ (Download required.) San Andre is built with advanced OpenType functionality and has a guaranteed top-notch quality, containing stylistic and contextual alternates, ligatures and more features; all to give you full control and customizability. The font has extensive lingual support, covering all Latin-based languages, from North Europa to South Africa, from America to South-East Asia. It contains all characters and symbols you'll ever need, including all punctuation and numbers.

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

This elegant typeface was suggested to me by type critic Daniel Will-Harris. Jensen Arabique is based on a set of capital letters drawn by Gustav Jensen that included the word "ARABIQUE" at the top of the first page, therefore the name. Daniel Will-Harris has this to say about Jensen Arabique: "I found an example of this unexecuted Gustav Jensen typeface in a type sample book from 1933, and Jason Castle lovingly digitized it with all its rare and unusual curves intact." Uppercase with alternates, numerals and some punctuation.

Youthful Fontsmith received a brief to develop a font that would form part of the broadcast identity for the UK’s first digital Freeview channel – E4. It needed to work seamlessly in text and display, both in print and on-screen, and please the eye of the target audience, 18-34-year-olds. So, young, fresh and informal. No problem. Except for one thing: the timing. Daughter As he worked on FS Maja, Jason Smith was occupied by another imminent deadline: the birth of his third child. The pressure was mounting, but rather than let it get to him, Jason embraced the challenge and made light of the tension, fashioning a bright, bubbly, entertaining type with a personality made for memorable headlines. Beautifully random FS Maja’s soft, rounded shapes and assured, fluent lines encompass lots of notable features that contribute to its warm, fun-loving personality, including: a very large x-height; a short, rounded serif to allow for close spacing and give texture to body text; a slight convexity, or bulge, in the stroke terminals; a calligraphic fluidity in the entry to the down-stroke of most lowercase letters; open, generous curves, especially in the “B”, “P” and “R”; and a “w” made of two “u”s.

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.

The font DXAngelusMediaval was developed on the basis of the Angelus Mediaval font, which was issued by Russian type foundry from the beginning of the 20th century (type foundry of G. Bertgold, St. Petersburg and Moscow, before 1904). Probably, the font is a reworking of the DeVinne font (1892 (?), Designer Nicholas J. Werner) of the American Central Type Foundry. For the reconstruction, we used examples of font prints: Cyrillic from the catalog "Art Fonts", 1929, Latin part - Chicago font, from the catalog "La Fonderie Typographique Francaise" (FTF) 1924. In addition, in the font are available Digits of the old style and ligature.

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.

Sharpe Variable is a stylish serif typeface family. The original type was drawn between 2018 and 2019, and the variable font and its updated styles was created in 2020. It is clear, sharp and has brave, lively letter forms but with a conservative backbone. This font is provided as a Variable Font. It is only one font file, but this file contains multiple styles. Use the sliders in Illustrator, Photoshop or InDesign to manually set any weight and width. This gives you not only the 15 predefined styles, but instead more than half a million steps to customize the type to the exact look your project requires. Each style contains ligatures and support for a wide range of languages. More info about Variable Fonts: https://mansgreback.com/s/About_Variable_Fonts.pdf

Kelly is Sans serif Version of Mikela Typeface. It is a Bold Minimalist Elegant Modern vintage font with beautiful ligatures, tons of special alternative glyphs, ornament and multilingual support. It's a very versatile font that works great in large and small sizes. Perfect for branding projects, Logo design, Clothing Branding, product packaging, magazine headers, or simply as a stylish text overlay to any background image. HOW TO ACCESS ALTERNATE CHARACTERS Open glyphs panel: In Adobe Photoshop go to Window - glyphs In Adobe Illustrator go to Type - glyphs

Eclectic FS Siena is a typeface with history, and not just in the sense of having its origins in classical Roman lettering. Fontsmith founder Jason Smith first committed it to tracing paper while still at college, instinctively redrawing letterforms based on Hermann Zapf’s Optima according to ‘what felt right’. When Krista Radoeva took up the challenge to edit and extend the typeface, she and Jason were determined to preserve its subtly nonconformist and eclectic spirit. Like a great dish, there are individual components throughout the character set that all add flavour, and need to be balanced in order to work together. The smooth connection of the ‘h’ ‘m’ ‘n’ and ‘r’ contrasts with the corners of the ‘b’ and ‘p’. The instantly recognisable double-storey ‘a’ – the starting point of the design – contrasts with the single-storey ‘g’ and the more cursive ‘y’. And only certain characters – ‘k’, ‘w’, ‘v’ and ‘x’ in the lowercase and ‘K’, ‘V’, ‘W’, ‘X’ and ‘Y’ in the caps – have curved strokes. Transitional FS Siena is a contrasted sans-serif typeface, blending classical elegance and modern simplicity. Its construction and proportions are descended from classical broad-nib calligraphy and humanist typefaces, with a high contrast between the thick and thin strokes. The angle of the contrast, though, is vertical, more in the character of pointed-nib calligraphy and modernist typefaces. This vertical stress helps to give FS Siena a strong, cultured presence on the page. Idiosyncratic italics The italics for FS Siena were developed by Krista to complement the roman upper and lower-case alphabets first drawn by Jason. Many of the letterforms are built differently to their roman counterparts: there’s a single-tier ‘a’, a looped ‘k’ and connections more towards the middle of stems, such as in the ‘m’, ‘n’ and ‘u’. These distinctions, along with generally much narrower forms than the roman, give the italics extra emphasis within body copy, where the two are side-by-side. In editorial, especially, the combination can be powerful. To cap it all… In his original draft of the typeface, Jason found inspiration in Roman square capitals of the kind most famously found on Trajan’s Column in Rome. In keeping with those ancient inscriptions, he intended the capitals of FS Siena to also work in all-upper-case text, in logotypes for luxury consumer brands and property developments, for example. A little added space between the upper-case letters lets the capitals maintain their poise in a caps-only setting, while still allowing them to work alongside the lower-case letterforms. The caps-only setting also triggers a feature called case punctuation, which adapts hyphens, brackets and other punctuation to complement the all-caps text.

SchmalfetteCP is the result of another collaboration between designers Jason Walcott and Rob King. King suggested that Walcott revive this wonderful and somewhat forgotten sans serif typeface from the mid 1950s. Originally designed by Walter Haettenschweiler in 1954, Schmalfette Grotesk was used for many years in the German magazine "Twen". The typeface was notoriously hard to acquire at the time and graphic designers in the USA often resorted to cutting letters from the Twen magazines and reusing them in their own designs. Later, when digital type came along several typefaces very similar were created that claimed to be digital revivals of Schmalfette Grotesk. However, they are actually only loosely based on the original. The proportions are different and in some cases a lower case was added. The original font was all caps. At Rob King's suggestion, Jason Walcott has strived to recreate the most faithful digital revival possible of the original Schmalfette Grotesk with the new version of SchmalfetteCP. In some cases small changes were made to accommodate today's digital needs (e.g. web fonts), but anyone who has ever searched for this typeface now has a version available that most closely resembles Haettenschweiler's original work. Schmalfette CP comes in OpenType format in both .ttf and .otf files and offers support for all Latin based and Eastern European languages.

Elliptical The squareness of curves. That was the elliptical – in more than one sense – notion being explored in the making of FS Hackney. The squareness of curves and vertical terminals to create a gentle, soft sans serif, with a little bit of magic. A momentary thought – “It doesn’t have to be like this” – provided the spur to explore the verticals and skeletons of letterforms beyond conventional type design limits. A 12-month gestation period gave rise to a font with a larger-than-usual character set, including non-lining figures, small caps and superior and inferior numbers. It’s a collection that speaks confidently for itself. Assertive It was the Hackney carriage – the black London cab – that gave this font its name, not the north London neighbourhood. Solid, dependable, effective and built to last, FS Hackney was honed to perform in all conditions. Cool, compelling lines and a satisfying overall simplicity lend FS Hackney its assertive air. Assured, versatile and effective; just like a black cab (but without the grumbling). Machined Over a string of meetings, Jason Smith and FS Hackney designer Nick Job worked out how to infuse Nick’s sketched letterforms with Fontsmith’s familiar geniality. “Nick is very meticulous and produces very clean design work,” says Jason. “Hackney is ideal for branding as it’s very clear and its quirks are sensible ones, not odd ones, that don’t distract from the message.”

The Scriptorium got its start in the early days of personal computers with a few font designs for the Commodore 64, and the very first font which we did back then in the early 1980s was a gothic calligraphy font. That style of fonts - the medieval, gothic and black letter genre - has always been the backbone of our collection, but with recent releases we've stayed away from them to introduce a bit more variety. Well, with our new Zauberer font the antique, medieval and gothic look is back with a vengeance. Zauberer isn't a true medieval calligraphy style. It's based on early printed type from Germany which combines calligraphic elements with decorative embellishments from the woodcut printing era. The result is decorative and antique looking and rather appealing. The name comes from the German word for a magician or illusionist.

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.