The ITC Franklin™ typeface design marks the next phase in the evolution of one of the most important American gothic typefaces. Morris Fuller Benton drew the original design in 1902 for American Type Founders (ATF); it was the first significant modernization of a nineteenth-century grotesque. Named in honor of Benjamin Franklin, the design not only became a best seller, it also served as a model for several other sans serif typefaces that followed it. Originally issued in just one weight, the ATF Franklin Gothic family was expanded over several years to include an italic, a condensed, a condensed shaded, an extra condensed and, finally, a wide. No light or intermediate weights were ever created for the metal type family. In 1980, under license from American Type Founders, ITC commissioned Victor Caruso to create four new weights in roman and italic - book, medium, demi and heavy - while preserving the characteristics of the original ATF design. This series was followed in 1991 by a suite of twelve condensed and compressed designs drawn by David Berlow. ITC Franklin Gothic was originally released as two designs: one for display type and one for text. However, in early digital interpretations, a combined text and display solution meant the same fonts were used to set type in any size, from tiny six-point text to billboard-size letters. The problem was that the typeface design was almost always compromised and this hampered its performance at any size. David Berlow, president of Font Bureau, approached ITC with a proposal to solve this problem that would be mutually beneficial. Font Bureau would rework the ITC Franklin Gothic family, enlarge and separate it into distinct text and display designs, then offer it as part of its library as well. ITC saw the obvious value in the collaboration, and work began in early 2004. The project was supposed to end with the release of new text and display designs the following year. But, like so many design projects, the ITC Franklin venture became more extensive, more complicated and more time consuming than originally intended. The 22-font ITC Franklin Gothic family has now grown to 48 designs and is called simply ITC Franklin. The new designs range from the very willowy Thin to the robust Ultra -- with Light, Medium, Bold and Black weights in between. Each weight is also available in Narrow, Condensed and Compressed variants, and each design has a complementary Italic. In addition to a suite of new biform characters (lowercase characters drawn with the height and weight of capitals), the new ITC Franklin Pro fonts also offer an extended character set that supports most Central European and many Eastern European languages. ITC Franklin Text is currently under development.

Morris is a four-font family produced by HiH Retrofonts and based on the work of the very English William Morris. William Morris wanted a gothic type drawn from the 14th century blackletter tradition that he admired both stylistically and philosophically. He drew from several sources. His principal inspiration for his lower case was the 1462 Bible by Peter Schoeffer of Mainz; particularly notable for the first appearance of the ‘ear’ on the g. The upper case was Morris’s amalgam of the Italian cursive closed caps popular throughout the 12th through 15th centuries, a modern example of which is Goudy’s Lombardic Capitals. The gothic that Morris designed was first used by his Kelmscott Press for the publication of the Historyes Of Troye in 1892. It was called “Troy Type” and was cut at 18 points by Edward Prince. It was also used for The Tale of Beowulf. The typeface was re-cut in at 12 points and called “Chaucer Type” for use in The Order of Chivalry and The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Morris' objective is designing his gothic was not only to preserve the color and presence of his sources, but to create letters that were more readable to the English eye. ATF copied Troy and called it Satanick. Not only was the ATF version popular in the United States; but, interestingly, sold very well in Germany. There was great interest in that country in finding a middle ground between blackletter and roman styles -- one that was comfortable for a wider readership. The Morris design was considered one of the more successful solutions. Our interpretation, which we call Morris Gothic, substantially follows the Petzendorfer model used by other versions we have seen, with the following exceptions: 1) a larger fillet radius on the upper arm of the H, 2) a more typically broadpen stroke in place of the foxtail on the Q, which I do not like, 3) inclusion of the aforementioned ear on the g and 4) a slightly shorter descender on the y. We have included five ornaments, at positions 0135, 0137, 0167, 0172 and 0177. The German ligatures ‘ch’ & ‘ck’ can be accessed using the left and right brace keys (0123 & 0125). Morris Initials One and Morris Initials Two are two of several different styles of decorative initial letters that Morris designed for use with his type. He drew from a variety of 15th century sources, among which were Peter Schoeffer’s 1462 Mainz Bible and the lily-of-the-valley alphabet by Gunther Zainer of Augsburg. Each of the two initial fonts is paired with the Morris Gothic lower case. Morris Ornaments is a collection of both text ornaments and forms from the surrounding page-border decorations.

Umbero is an experimental geometric blackletter. Umbero was inspired by modern street art (by artists like Pokras Lampas, RETNA, etc.), gothic script and constructivism. It has an ornate and twitchy structure: you can not find two similar letters. Capital letters have even more complex structure, then lowercase, to the extent that you can even use them as initial letters with a different, more calm font if you want to achieve a medieval stylization in a contemporary way. Get Umbero if you need something extra for your design. Or vice versa use it as a starting point of your work. It’s a perfect choice for the mystic or contemporary logos, headlines, oversize typography, branding, identity, website design, album art, covers, posters, advertising, etc.

The Roman alphabet has seen endless variations in interpretations of its classical form, and various wood type styles managed to explore everything from XXX condensed to hyper extended and expanded. This delicate and handsomely proportioned extended Roman was issued by Page Manufacturing Co. in 1872 and released as simply “No. 251” after Page was acquired by Hamilton. It is a rare font to find in print shops, most likely due to the very fine lines that would no doubt be less durable that bolder gothic jobbing fonts. While being quite wide, it still holds the elegant grace of wide Romans such as Craw Modern. This new digitization features a full Western and Eastern European Character set as well as ligatures and alternate characters.

Gaudeamus is a Cyrillic face of medieval Gothic textura inspired of incunabulum artworks. Recommended for a historical and cultural context, but it goes well beyond. Suitable for music, books, fashion, catering, packaging and more. Works for long paragraphs and short sentences. Features: — 7 Stylistic sets; two of which are text preformats to the commons of the Middle Ages and Early Modern historical periods. — Sets of Ordinal and Superscript characters for French, Portuguese, Spanish typesetting. — Localized letterforms for Bulgarian and Serbian. — Localized diacritics for Polish and Romanian. — Support typesetting in Russian pre-reform orthography. — Support typesetting in Middle English orthography. — Case sensitive characters for greater consistency with uppercase letters. — Set of Roman Numerals. — Standard and Discretional ligatures. — 530 glyphs; 40 languages support.