Almost every type designer feels the need, from time to time, to interrupt his or her serious work on complex text type systems for something more playful. In Luc(as)'s case this has often meant designing more typefaces. In the early 1990s, while working on Thesis, Luc(as) drew several display faces which were based on the shapes of TheSans but were either de(con)structive versions or experimental variations. Probably the most innovative of these was Nebulae, in which the lettershapes have been dissolved into clouds of bubbles; the three versions can be layered to obtain a denser (and more legible) structure which can also be multi-coloured. A fourth version called ThreeDee (3D) offers a convincing simulation of three-dimensional bubble-like type floating in space.

Claudium started as an attempt to create a sans serif version of Garamond. As time went on it gradually became a meditation on the nature of French typography from Garamond to Excoffon. It was especially influenced by Cassandre's type for the Orly airport which seems to epitomize certain aspects of the French character�at least in typography. Attempts to create an italic met with disaster. Gradually, after lots of Cotes du Rhone, a cursive, based on Garamond�s Greek forms, emerged. It came at a time when I was looking at lot at Victor Hammer�s uncial and Andromaque cursive. So Claudium Cursive was developed as a lower case only and mated to the Claudium Regular caps ala Griffo�s original italic type. In keeping with the cursive lowercase there are cursive oldstyle numbers.

Secession is a very readable typeface, suitable for short blocks of text. If you have grown weary of the standard sans-serif faces one sees all the time, you may want to use Secession as a fresh and distinctive substitute. Like Kunstler Grotesk, Secession is one of a number of typeface designs that attempts to reconcile Germany’s blackletter tradition with the international familiarity of roman letterforms in a simple, robust design suitable for meeting the demands of a modern industrial economy, while rejecting the extraneous ornamentation of the departing Victorian era. Unlike Kunstler Grotesk, Secession was designed with a lower case. Secession Bold was originally jointly released as Halbfette Secession by Bauer & Company of Stuttgart and H. Berthold AG of Berlin around 1898. The rest of the family was designed by HiH. The basic family of four: Text, Oblique, Bold and BoldOblique are available in two versions: one set with the standard contemporary lining or ranging numerals for spreadsheets and tables and one set of old-style figures (with OSF in font name) for use with text. The two versions of the basic family, Secession and Secession OSF were released in July 2006. Cousins include ExtraBold, SCOSF Text, and two multi-lingual versions of the text weight. Secession ML includes the Latin Extended-A character set in unicode format plus 17 ligatures and a few strays. Secession GreekML has all the characters of the ML version plus the unicode Greek set and 17 Greek ligatures. Release of the cousins took place in August and October of 2006. Click on BUYING CHOICES. Click on GLYPHS and use drop-down menus and slider to see the all the glyphs for the various fonts. Similar: Birmingham (Ref 100 Ornamental Alphabets, Solo); Spartana (Art Nouveau Display Alphabets, Solo)

Franz Kafka’s manuscripts have always been a source of inspiration for designer Julia Sysmäläinen. At first she was just interested in literary aspects but later she noticed that content and visual form can not be separated in the work of this ingenious writer. Analyzing Kafka’s handwriting at the Berlin National Library, Julia was inspired to design the typeface FF Mister – by now a well known classic. Over the years, FF Mister K became a handsome typeface family and even produced offspring: the Josef K Patterns. Some of Kafka’s most expressive letterforms were the starting point for these decorative ornaments. How do the Patterns work? Outlines and fillings correspond to the uppercase and the lowercase letters on your keyboard. You can use them separately or layer them on top of each other. If you write a line of “pattern-text” in lowercase and repeat it underneath in uppercase you get a row of fillings followed by a row of outlines. Now you can color them and then set line space = 0 to get a single line of layered colored ornaments. Alternatively, activating OpenType / stylistic set / stylistic alternates will also unite the two lines to a single layered line. Further magic can be done with OpenType / contextual alternates turned on. On the gallery page of this font family is a downloadable Josef K Patterns.pdf with an alphabetical overview of forms. Hundreds of patterns are possible … we’d love to see some of yours and present them here on the website!

Temet Nosce - Serif font family - Multilingual - 6 Styles Temet Nosce Serif font family help you develop your creative projects with its 6 styles and multilingual supports. It was inspired by the famous saying from ancient Greek mythology. The characters that make up its structure were influenced by the carved letters in the old stone inscriptions. According to ancient Greek and Roman authors, there were three maxims prominently inscribed upon the Temple of Apollo at Delphi: "know thyself", "nothing too much" and "give a pledge and trouble is at hand". Their exact location is uncertain; they are variously stated to have been on the wall of the pronaos (forecourt), on a column, on a doorpost, on the temple front, or on the propylaea (gateway). The date of their inscription is also unknown, but they were present at least as early as the 5th century BC. Although the temple was destroyed and rebuilt several times over the years, the maxims appear to have persisted into the Roman era (1st century AD), at which time, according to Pliny the Elder, they were written in letters of gold. This font comes with uppercase, lowercase, punctuation, symbols and numbers, ligatures and multilingual supports. Ideal for books and magazines, editorials, headlines, websites, logos, branding, advertising and more. This font family can meet your needs in all creative projects, modern and classic. With this font you can create your unique designs. Have a good time.

ITC Don't Panic's distressed shapes and craggy outlines evoke the feeling you get when you're just barely in control of a situation. This is type design on the edge. ITC Panic is further down the emotional track, when you've actually lost control and there is no hope in sight. Thompson says the inspiration for these faces arrived one day in the mail. I received an envelope that looked like it had a rough trip; the type that was stamped on it had a tired, ragged appearance. Ironically, the haggard envelope woke me up. I got excited and wanted to replicate the look as a font of type." Thompson designed ITC Don't Panic, then stood back and looked at it and decided it cried out for a more agitated companion. ITC Don't Panic gave birth to the positively psychotic offspring, ITC Panic. Both are all-cap designs with alternate characters in the unshift position. Creating an authentically disturbed appearance proved to be a challenge for Thompson. "I tried to design agitated characters, but they looked staged. So I tried multiple photocopies, but that didn't work. Eventually, I laser-printed the basic characters, wadded up the lasers, then flattened them out and stomped on them with heavy boots. The end result was scanned and used as the basis for the rest of the design." Thompson's work on web sites and multimedia has influenced his interest in type and typography that transcends the cool, unemotional nature of the computer."

PF Stamps covers a wide range of applications which require the stamp effect. This is a form of lettering which was very popular in the mid-twentieth century for product labeling. Special machinery was developed by mainly two companies, one in the United States and the other in Germany. This machinery produced paper die cuts which were later used as a base for the marking with a paintbrush. PF Stamps Paint was developed to simulate this type of lettering. Two other styles, Metal and Flex, have been very popular since its original release. The first one was developed from a metallic stamp imprint, whereas the second one with its slight 3-D look simulates letters stamped on plastic. To insure realistic results, uppercase letters are different from lowercase. This is very useful when two similar letters sit next to each other. There 3 more styles: Solid (the stencil in its regular clean form), Rough and the very interesting Blur. The all new “Pro” version comes to complete this series with what was missing: 93 matching frames and frames parts which will satisfy the most demanding designer. This is a bonus font which is available only with the purchase of the whole family. Use these frames “as is” at any size, or connect the frame parts to each other to create longer frames. Finally, this series supports more than hundred languages which are based on the Latin, Greek or Cyrillic scripts.

When Patricia Lillie was growing up, she thought the coolest thing in the world would be finding her own name listed in a library catalog. The fantasy came true in 1986 when her first children's book was published. Five more followed. The thrill of seeing her work on library shelves hasn't abated, but today, Lillie is just as likely to see one of her typefaces on the cover of a book. She has created several display faces and image fonts. My first typeface designs were based on lettering I'd done while working for a library, doing graphics work for the children's section," she explains. "I currently do a lot of web design, but type is my favorite thing." The Tickles (ITC Tickle and ITC Tickle Too) are Lillie's first ITC typeface releases. "I was playing around with a Sharpie marker one day and liked the way the letters looked," she recalls. "I started redoing the letters from scratch in Fontographer to see what developed, and liked those letters too." ITC Tickle is a bi-form font (with both cap and lowercase letters of the same size) that clearly breaks a typographic rule or two. ITC Tickle Too has the same basic lettershapes, but they've grown clusters of stipples that give a three-dimensional quality to the design. The result is a friendly, offbeat display family that's guaranteed to add a giggle to your work."

Gibon draws inspiration from the fascinating comic book universe, inhabited not only by many legendary superheroes, monsters and superbadass antiheroes, but also by its own legendary typefaces. Every cartoonist and hand letterer needs a pencil, a T-square and on and on. For digital lettering, books Gibon is an option. This handy toolkit helps you easily letter your comic strips, but even if you have nothing to do with cartooning, this bundle can simply add some comic book feel to your design or make some noise with layered sound effects. The basic font for speech balloon inking is Gibon Lettering, while Gibon Bold and Heavy let you emphasize certain text. Gibon Bold is further developed as a multilayer type where different styles are designed to be overlaid on top of each other, letting you work with built-in shadows, 3D effects and outlines to create striking SFX. Gibon Balloons offers different types of layered speech balloons and a few halftone patterns. The OpenType contextual alternate feature is set to automatically apply the random effect using two sets of glyphs. Traditionally, comic books are lettered in caps only, which explains why Gibon is an all caps font. To easily access alternate characters they are encoded as lowercase letters. For example, type the uppercase “I” to access the crossbar “I” and the lowercase “i” to access the crossbar-less “I”. Turn on stylistic set number one to use only crossbar-less “I”.

ITC Don't Panic 's distressed shapes and craggy outlines evoke the feeling you get when you're just barely in control of a situation. This is type design on the edge. ITC Panic is further down the emotional track, when you've actually lost control and there is no hope in sight. Thompson says the inspiration for these faces arrived one day in the mail. I received an envelope that looked like it had a rough trip; the type that was stamped on it had a tired, ragged appearance. Ironically, the haggard envelope woke me up. I got excited and wanted to replicate the look as a font of type." Thompson designed ITC Don't Panic, then stood back and looked at it and decided it cried out for a more agitated companion. ITC Don't Panic gave birth to the positively psychotic offspring, ITC Panic. Both are all-cap designs with alternate characters in the unshift position. Creating an authentically disturbed appearance proved to be a challenge for Thompson. "I tried to design agitated characters, but they looked staged. So I tried multiple photocopies, but that didn't work. Eventually, I laser-printed the basic characters, wadded up the lasers, then flattened them out and stomped on them with heavy boots. The end result was scanned and used as the basis for the rest of the design." Thompson's work on web sites and multimedia has influenced his interest in type and typography that transcends the cool, unemotional nature of the computer."

The late-19th-century Prussian-American printer and publisher Louis Prang, the “father of the American Christmas card”, was well-known for his efforts to improve art education in the United States. He published many instructional books and even founded a training school for art teachers. One of the books he published included a series of alphabets for sign painters, lithographers, illuminators, architects and civil engineers. There was nothing truly original there — in the book’s preface, Prang says that the alphabets were “based on foreign forms and adapted for American taste”. The one alphabet that caught my attention in that book was one simply called “Italic”. It’s a high- contrast modern, a Didone really, but with an interesting little twist: the lowercase is almost entirely connected, which makes for an interesting mix of modern typography and classic calligraphy. That stuff is right up my alley now. Whenever my eyes happen on a modern, it’s easy, even almost impulsive for me to envision swashes coming out of serifs and terminals. The caps melt and the minuscules dance with them. And so I brought my vision to life. Prangs is an italic set of three weights, each containing more than 1400 glyphs with plenty of OpenType features and Latin language support. This set celebrates the convergence of three centuries of fancy display alphabets. These fonts should work wherever moderns are used to elevate and scripts are used to appeal — namely today’s branding, packaging and glossy publications.

This set of decorated initial letters was inspired by those used in 1510 in Nancy (France, Lorraine) for printing of "Recueil ou croniques des hystoires des royaulmes d'Austrasie ou France orientale[...]" Author Symphorien Champion, unknown printer. There were three sorts of initials family, but only one complete and clear, except a very few characters. The printer used some letters to represent others, as V, turned over to make a A, D to make a Q, M for E, So, the reconstruction was a little less difficult. Thorn, Eth, L slash and O slash were also added. The original font's letters was only drawn in white on a black background only, but it was tempting to propose a negative version in black on white. A few letters have multiple appearance, but only the A was clear enough to be reproduced. It can be used as variously as web-site titles, posters and flyer design, publishing texts looking like ancient ones, or greeting cards, all various sorts of presentations, as a very decorative, elegant and luxurious additional font... This font supports strong enlargements revealing its fine details and remaining very smart. Its original medieval height is about one inch equivalent to about three to four lines of characters. This font may be used with all our blackletter fonts, but as well with "1543 Humane Jenson", "1557 Italic" and "1742 Civilite", without any fear about anachronism.

Karlo is a super family of several branches, originating in the same lightweight skeleton. The lightweights are based on a pen of an even stroke-width. Inspired by the writings of calligrapher Edward Johnston, the family moves on in two directions in the heavier weights. Johnston demonstrated that the broad nib pen can produce different writing styles. Following this, one heavy weight has a humanistic low stroke contrast (KarloSerifBold and KarloSansBold), and another has a high stroke contrast of vertical axis with references to the 19th century jobbing typefaces (KarloOpen). The latter is inspired by Johnston’s demonstration of the broad nib pen, where he suggested fastening two pencils together. With each pencil representing an edge of the pen, it becomes more evident how the pen works in writing. The friendly informal look makes KarloSans and KarloSerif usable for both running text and for display sizes. KarloOpen, on the other hand, is solely designed for display purpose showing few words at a time. In Denmark, a guy named Karlo would typically be an old fellow with a slick hairstyle that makes an effort with his appearance. He is a handyman who can do a bit of this and that when needed. He is a happy go lucky kind of guy that takes one day at a time. To me, the typeface family has some of the same qualities. Check out Pyke which is a great pair for Karlo.

I will spare you the long-winded description this time and all of the motivations and witty innuendoes. Quite frankly, I forgot about creating this typeface and it sat on my hard drive for almost a year. Luckily, my daughter Isobel saw the initial drawings one day and ask me about those pretty letters and I remembered… yep, that happened. That said, time made this a better typeface… with fresh eyes and time, much was redrawn, retooled and expanded to something I truly enjoy playing with. Shameless makes extensive use of Contextual alternates to create a proper ebb and flow from letter to letter. Interestingly, there are only a handful of ligatures… instead many special combinations are accounted for solely by relying on Contextual Alts. Mix in Stylistic Alts, Swashes, responsive Titling Alts, numerous Style Sets, etc and you can have a lot of fun. I created 2 versions. A ‘Standard’ version that has 2200+ characters and a ‘Deluxe’ version that has 2400+ characters and an interesting caveat… I plan on expanding the Deluxe version any time I have an idea to add to the typeface… and as such, buyers will receive all of those updates at no charge (with updates going directly to the distributors). You get what you pay for… no insane discounts. Oh, and if you are wondering… Shameless is based on my handwriting using Kuretake Zig CocoIro pens. I love these pens.

A revival of one of the popular wooden type fonts of the 19th century, suitable for text or display, narrow, short descenders, diamond shaped ornamental points at median.

Selopaty Campble is a beautiful and cool handwritten signature font. Looks amazing on branding, quotes, business cards and other designs. The font includes multiple language support. Happy Designing!

Dulan Anzelica simplifies elegance into one truly outstanding script font. This font is the perfect fit for all of your logos, branding, social media, and crafty DIY projects.

Exodus is one of my favorite fonts so far inspired by old manuscripts and sci fi movies. Its a decorative display font. See the whole presentation here: Behance.net

A revival of one of the popular wooden type fonts of the 19th century, condensed, bold, curved serifs, a very useful design for display, upper and lower case.

Stencil-like lettering appearing on a 1930s WPA (Works Progress Administration) poster for the Pennsylvania Game Commission saying “Protect Our Birds” is the basis for Fall Fashion JNL.

Melcheburn is a classic late-medieval gothic font based on original lettering by Samuel Welo. It has strong, formal lower case letters and extremely ornate and decorative capitals.

Shipping stencils cut on an antique machine with its somewhat crude slab serif type design inspired Container Stencil JNL, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Vxtr11 is a experimental typeface for use on logos and titles this typeface is not for text! see the presentation here http://www.behance.net/gallery/Vxtr11-Experimental-Typeface/818127

Wood Line JNL is based on a printed example of a vintage handmade wood type. This sans serif digital font is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Old Favorites JNL is a collection of over 35 dingbats based on designs from the early days of printing. These timeless images will fill a variety of needs.

From a few hand drawn letters seen on a poster from 1939 you may find this font familiar. Miss Scarlett resembles the Gone With The Wind poster lettering.

Autocode is a highly legible monospaced font based on Autobahn, ideal for coding and wherever mono spacing is required. It also works effectively as a general text font.

Bubblewrap is based on a 10 x 14 dot matrix grid and is perfect for projects where a little care and attention is the order of the day.

The hand lettering on a World War I recruitment poster for the French Air Service inspired French Nouveau JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.