Art into type In 2008, Fontsmith were approached by their friend, Jon Scott, to investigate whether a typeface could assume the aesthetic of one artist’s body of work. Jon’s not-for-profit charity, Measure, was organising an event for the artist, Conrad Shawcross, whose giant mechanical installation, entitled Chord, was going on public display in the long-disused Kingsway tram tunnel in Holborn. Chord explores the way we perceive time, as either a line or a cycle. Two enormous machines with dozens of rotating arms and moving in opposite directions, weave rope with almost infinite slowness. An unusual brief Phil Garnham visited Conrad in his Hackney studio to get a feel for his work and ideas. “Conrad is a very clever and philosophical guy. He struggled to see how typeface design had any relevance to him and his art. This was going to be a challenge.” The artist presented the type designer with a pile of rope and a huge diagram of sketches and mathematical workings. “This was, in essence, my brief.” Phil developed three concepts, the simplest of which ticked all the boxes. “The idea of the strokes in the letterforms appearing and ending at peaks or points of origin fitted perfectly with Conrad’s idea of time occurring and ending at two ends of the sculpture.” Two versions Phil planned modules for two versions of the typeface: one with five lines in the letterforms and one with seven. He then drew the modules on-screen and twisted and turned them to build the machine that is FS Conrad. “This is not a simple headline typeface,” says Phil. “It’s not a rigid structure. It has varying character widths, and it’s informed by real typographic insight and proportions so that it actually works as piece of functioning, harmonious type.”

Kilkenny is a decorative, Victorian-style font based on the metal type named Nymphic that was designed by Hermann Ihlenberg. Ihlenburg was born in Germany in 1843 where he studied art and worked for several German type foundries. He moved to the USA in 1866 and worked for the L. Johnson & Co. foundry, later MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan. American Type Founders acquired this typeface when they took over the MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan foundry and Nymphic appears in the ATF catalog of 1896. For this digital version, the character set has been expanded to include accented characters, punctuation, and currency symbols—and most everything you would expect to find in a digital font. The original metal font consisted of swash caps, upper case characters, and a “morticed” lower case, which was raised off the baseline. This mortcied form was designed to nestle inside the ornate swash caps as well as to work with the upper case. The five digital versions contained in this set are basically different configurations of these different alphabet sets, they differ as follows: Kilkenny—the original upper case version with a modified lower case that has been enlarged, shifted to align along the baseline, and given taller ascenders to give it a more “regular” appearance. Kilkenny Eureka—true to the original design with the “morticed” or superior lowercase forms. Kilkenny Swash—original swash caps with the modified lower case. Kilkenny Swash Caps—original swash caps with the original caps as the lower case. Kilkenny Swash Eureka—swash caps that have been adjusted to match the weight of the original lower case forms. The OpenType version contains all of the above, plus additional Central European and Cyrillic characters for a total of almost 1000 glyphs.

Wingman consists of nine fonts, that can work together in perfect harmony to create beautiful designs. Like a true wingman they reinforce each others potential and offer mutual support. Wingman Brush takes the lead and is, with its six styles, well equipped for many challenging typographic tasks. All Brush styles (except Brush Extra) have 815 glyphs and are packed with Open Type magic, e.g. contextual alternates, that automatically replace beginning and ending glyphs as you type. There are lots of swashes to choose from, organized in several stylistic sets. The bold and the regular styles have matching shadow versions. Brush Bold and Brush Silhouette fit together also. Nice logo-like effects can be achieved by layering these styles. On top of that Brush Vintage was added for a rustic feel. Brush Extra has 322 design elements in both smooth and vintage style. Wingman Serif was designed to use together with the brush styles. It comes in a solid and outline version. Both fonts can fly solo, but together with Wingman Brush they make a powerful formation. Wingman Family requires the use of an Open Type savvy application.

The typeface Fry was developed in 2008 specially for the Sky-Fish company (fish and seafood dealer). This type is designed for small texts and has a friendly and a fairytale historic flavor. Fry takes the openness and dynamism of humanistic sans serif, the simple and softness of lubok’s letters (primitive style) and the fluidity of shallow marine fry. Despite its funny style, Fry works well even in the 5 point size. In large sizes Fry demonstrates its originality, vivacity and softness, in the small characteristics become less visible, and Fry’s readability becomes more important. This makes the typeface suitable for many tasks of typography. The typeface includes extended set of Latin, Cyrillic and Greek, old style and lining figures, historical alternates and special local features. The combination of lubok’s aesthetics and funny dynamic forms make a nature of Fry. Fry was exhibited on Svjato Cyrillic (Kharkov, Ukraine) festival in 2008. It was awarded for excellence in type and graphic design at Modern Cyrillic 2009 competition. Also it received the second prize in display category at Granshan 2011. Fry was selected among 50 typefaces for the Call for type exhibition in the Gutenberg museum (2013).

Ligatures FS Rufus is an outgoing, likable sort of font with an eccentric streak. Wide letterforms and curious ink-traps make for an engaging personality, and a set of discretionary ligatures make FS Rufus irresistible to designers wanting to play. Not a small set, either: there are some 80 different options available. Wide The decision was made early on to make the letterforms of FS Rufus luxuriously wide. This generates a distinctive visual texture when the font is used for text. With other weights available for headlines, FS Rufus brings a curiously engaging look to editorial, magazine covers and advertising. Just look at my ink traps Ink traps are normally the preserve of fonts intended for printing at small sizes, in newspapers or directories – extra notches necessary to prevent ink from pooling. FS Rufus turns the ink trap into a beautiful eccentricity, flaunting it in both its lowercase and capitals. Take a look at the “h”, “a” and “k”, and the “B” and “N”. Attention-seeking? Moi?

Lefferts JNL is a wide, light type face type with a square shape. Perfect for formal text.

Features: Chella Lyfe Print: Uppercase letters, numbers, & extended punctuation We Offer Non-English support for the international designer as well Same stroke thickness with each font, so you don't need to make any time-consuming adjustments to get it looking right! This is such a fun new display font, perfect for creating quotes, logos, or just adding a hand-written touch to any project! While other fonts usually take some size adjusting to look just right, The ChellaLyfe variations in stroke thickness for upper and lower case fonts, so you can so it can display creativity and life in every stroke! Each font also has alternates for each letter, so when you type uppercase or lowercase for each font, the letters will change slightly. For example, tying in all caps with the Script font will connect each letter, whereas typing all lowercase will disconnect each letter.

What do you imagine the ideal casual invitation font would look like? It has to be cheerful, inviting, legible, creative, and loads of fun. But first and foremost, it has to look like real handwriting. Fonts seeming like real handwriting are always a major task, and although Canada Type already has plenty of fonts that solve the “looks like handwriting” issue in a variety of ways, we're once again raising the bar a little higher with this one. Birthday is a massive package that crosses the traditional font/handwriting solution of 2-letter ligatures and waltzes into the land of 3-letter combinations. Plenty of them, too! The complete Postscript and True Type versions of Birthday ship with no less than five separate fonts full of nothing but ligatures. And for even more realism, an alternates font is also included in the package, for a total of seven fonts of happy handwriting that can be used anywhere and everywhere personalization is of importance to a layout. For layout artists with advanced typography tools that take advantage of the power of OpenType, Birthday Pro is a wunderkind. All the individual letter alternates are accessible through the Stylistic Alternates feature, the 2-letter ligatures through the standard Ligatures feature, and the 3-letter ligatures via the Discretionary Ligatures feature (for the technically inclined: this includes a nice liga-to-dlig crossover, where the maximum number of possible ligated letters is automatically chosen at the push of a button). If you enjoy using OpenType, Birthday Pro is definitely for you. If on the other hand you like your fonts in Postsript or True Type, it is advisable to keep a character map handy while using Birthday. You will need it to take advantage of the many, many alternates and ligatures distributed over the fonts. The next time someone asks you for the perfect casual invitation font is, look no further. And as usually is with Canada Type, quality fonts are more affordable than ever.