Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813) was called the King of Printers; he was a prolific type designer, a masterful engraver of punches and the most widely admired printer of his time. His books and typefaces were created during the 45 years he was the director of the fine press and publishing house of the Duke of Parma in Italy. He produced the best of what are known as modern" style types, basing them on the finest writing of his time. Modern types represented the ultimate typographic development of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They have characteristics quite different from the types that preceded them; such as extreme vertical stress, fine hairlines contrasted by bold main strokes, and very subtle, almost non-existent bracketing of sharply defined hairline serifs. Bodoni saw this style as beautiful and harmonious-the natural result of writing done with a well-cut pen, and the look was fashionable and admired. Other punchcutters, such as the Didot family (1689-1853) in France, and J. E. Walbaum (1768-1839) in Germany made their own versions of the modern faces. Even though some nineteenth century critics turned up their noses and called such types shattering and chilly, today the Bodoni moderns are seen in much the same light as they were in his own time. When used with care, the Bodoni types are both romantic and elegant, with a presence that adds tasteful sparkle to headlines and advertising. Parma was designed by the monotype Design Team after studying Bodoni's steel punches at the Museo Bodoniana in Parma, Italy. They also referred to specimens from the "Manuale Tipografico," a monumental collection of Bodoni's work published by his widow in 1818.

Far out, fellow psychonauts, have you checked out the trippy typeface called Otoboke? Let me tell you, this font is not from this world—it’s straight from the cosmos! With its mind-bending letter pair thingamajigs, even repeating letters are otherworldly. Take a closer look at Otoboke, and you’ll notice the fur texture—it’s like the letters are alive and ready to party! But where did this font’s tripped-out, letterforms come from, you ask? Well, they were inspired by none other than Louis Minott’s 1965 classic, Davida, channeling the vibes, and taking it to a whole new level. So, if you’re ready to take your graphic design to a whole new dimension, look no further than Otoboke. This typeface is not for the faint of heart—it’s for the true freakazoids. Most Latin-based European writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aromanian, Aymara, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kurdish (Latin), Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Moldovan, Montenegrin, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Ossetian (Latin), Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Sami, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wolof, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec Zulu and Zuni.

Alfarooq is the most widely known epithet for the Islamic figure Umar ibn al-Khattab (c. 586 - 644) who was a leading companion and an adviser to the Islamic prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) who later became the second Muslim Caliph after Muhammad’s death (pbuh) in 632. Muslims widely know Umar ibn Al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him) as Alfarooq (i.e., he who knows and distinguishes between truth and falsehood). Alfarooq is a unique, wide, and headline Arabic display typeface. The main trait of this typeface is the novel design of its letters' tails and its dots which renders it as one of the modern stylish typefaces used for headlines and titles. This can be noticed in different letters such as Ain, Ghain, Jeem, Khah, Seen, Sheen, and others. In addition, Alfarooq font has an Arabic character set which supports Arabic, Persian, Kurdish, and Urdu letters and numerals with a limited range of specific Arabic ligatures. This typeface comes in two ultra-bold styles (i.e., Alfarooq and Alfarooq-Pro) and more than 430 distinctive glyphs with a single weight for each style. Alfarooq typeface effectively offers diverse typographic and digital usages including mainly the very large and wide poster-size works. Due to its strong baseline-stroke, Alfarooq typeface is appropriate for heading and titling works in Arabic, Persian, Kurdish, and Urdu newspapers, magazines, and other printed materials. It is also elegantly suitable for signs, book covers, advertisement light boards, street and city names, products- and services names, and titles of flyers, pamphlets, and posters. The wide style of Alfarooq font’s characters gives it more distinction when it is used in greeting cards, covers, exhibitions' signboards, external or internal walls of malls, and also the exits and entrances of airports and halls.

Breaking from our catalog of typefaces to create a new handwritten font family, Modern Love was born out of our desire to see what would happen if we took a step back from the norm. We weren’t looking for the perfection of the many calligraphy techniques, but more of a natural way of writing with the same tools. Our escapist experiment into casual lettering culminated into 4 fonts: Modern Love Regular, Grunge, Rough and Caps. Modern Love Regular is a hand-painted script, each glyph individually designed with a pointed brush and walnut ink. The aim was to create an effortless hand-drawn feel while keeping the contrast high density. Playful, yet polished, this font works very well when accentuated with the family’s two distinctive styles: Modern Love Grunge, simulating a washed-out effect, perfect to add a vintage look to your projects; and Modern Love Rough, with its crunchy borders, makes letters visibly rough-around-the edges and gives large letters an unmistakeable pop. All three fonts include a hand-painted set of ornaments, swashes and alternates to limitlessly customize and decorate your texts, accessible through Opentype features. Modern Love Caps is the fourth font, a handwritten Sans Serif that ties the family together with its simplicity and readability. Designed with a pointed nib and Indian ink, this font boasts a different style that perfectly complements Modern Love Regular, Grunge and Rough. The result is a fresh font family perfect to create headlines, posters, DIY hand-lettered artwork, books, holiday cards, wrapping paper, invitations, T-shirts, labels, packaging for cosmetics, fashion supplies, food products, artisanal goods, and an endless array of options for your projects. Modern Love…when brush meets passion. Check out also ‘Modern Love Slanted’ Turquoise Nautica

ROARRR! THE STYLES -Pantera Pro is the most complete style, and although its default look is mono-rhythmic it gets really playful and crazy like the examples of the posters by just activating the Decorative Ligatures button in the Open-type Panel of Adobe Illustrator. However, I recommend using also the Glyphs Panel because there you'll find much more variants per letter. Pantera Pro is in fact, coded in a way the combination of thicknesses will always look fantastic. -Pantera Black Left, and Pantera Black Right are actually “lite” versions of Pantera Pro: They have very little Open-Type code, so what you see here is what you get. Pantera Black Left has its left strokes thick, while Pantera Black Right has its right strokes thick. -Pantera White is a lovely member in this family that looks lighter and airy, hence its name. With the feature Standard Ligatures activated (liga) the font gets very playful. -Pantera Caps is based on sign painters lettering and since it follows the same pointed brush rules as the other styles, it matches perfectly. -Pantera Claws like its name suggests, is a set of icons that were done by our dear panther. THE STORY It is said that typography can never be as expressive as calligraphy, but sometimes it can get close enough. I tend to think that calligraphic trials, in order to work well as potential fonts, need first to go through very strict filters before going digital: While calligraphy is synonym of freedom (once its rules are mastered), type-design, in the other hand, has its battlefield a little tighter and tougher. When I practice pointed brush lettering, there are so many things happening on the paper. And most of them are delicious. The ones who know my work may see that although many of my fonts are very expressive, my handmade brush trials are much more lively than them. With that in mind, this time I tried to go further and rescue more of those things that are lost in the process of thinking type when first sketches are calligraphic. I wondered if I could create something wild, hence its name Panther, by understanding the randomness that sometimes calligraphy conveys and turning it to something systemic: With Pantera, I created an ordered disorder. Like it happens a lot in many kinds of lettering styles, in order to enrich the written word the scribe mixes the thickness of the strokes and the width of the letters. Like one of my favorite mentors say (1), they make thoughtful gestures Some lively strokes go down with a thick, while some do that with a thin. Some letters are very narrow, meaning some of them will need to be very wide to compensate. Why not?. The calligrapher is always thinking on the following letters, and he/she designs in his head the combination of thicks and thins before he/she executes them. He/she knows the playful rhythm the words will have before writing them. It takes time and skill to master this and achieve graceful results. Going back to the font, in Pantera, this combination of varying thicknesses and widths of letters were Open-Type coded so the user will see satisfactory results by just enabling or disabling some buttons on the glyphs panel. I'm very pleased with the result since it’s not very easy to find fonts which play with the words' rhythm like Pantera does, following of course, a strong calligraphic base. I believe that if you were on the prowl for innovative fonts, this is your chance to go wild and get Pantera! NOTES (1) Phrase by Yves Leterme. In fact, it’s the title of a book by him. EPILOGUE Esta fuente está dedicada a mi panterita