Divina Proportione is based from the original studies from Luca Pacioli. Luca Pacioli was born in 1446 or 1447 in Sansepolcro (Tuscany) where he received an abbaco education. Luca Pacioli was born in 1446 or 1447 in Sansepolcro (Tuscany) where he received an abbaco education. [This was education in the vernacular (i.e. the local tongue) rather than Latin and focused on the knowledge required of merchants.] He moved to Venice around 1464 where he continued his own education while working as a tutor to the three sons of a merchant. It was during this period that he wrote his first book -- a treatise on arithmetic for the three boys he was tutoring. Between 1472 and 1475, he became a Franciscan friar. In 1475, he started teaching in Perugia and wrote a comprehensive abbaco textbook in the vernacular for his students during 1477 and 1478. It is thought that he then started teaching university mathematics (rather than abbaco) and he did so in a number of Italian universities, including Perugia, holding the first chair in mathematics in two of them. He also continued to work as a private abbaco tutor of mathematics and was, in fact, instructed to stop teaching at this level in Sansepolcro in 1491. In 1494, his first book to be printed, Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalita, was published in Venice. In 1497, he accepted an invitation from Lodovico Sforza ("Il Moro") to work in Milan. There he met, collaborated with, lived with, and taught mathematics to Leonardo da Vinci. In 1499, Pacioli and Leonardo were forced to flee Milan when Louis XII of France seized the city and drove their patron out. Their paths appear to have finally separated around 1506. Pacioli died aged 70 in 1517, most likely in Sansepolcro where it is thought he had spent much of his final years. De divina proportione (written in Milan in 1496–98, published in Venice in 1509). Two versions of the original manuscript are extant, one in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, the other in the Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire in Geneva. The subject was mathematical and artistic proportion, especially the mathematics of the golden ratio and its application in architecture. Leonardo da Vinci drew the illustrations of the regular solids in De divina proportione while he lived with and took mathematics lessons from Pacioli. Leonardo's drawings are probably the first illustrations of skeletonic solids, an easy distinction between front and back. The work also discusses the use of perspective by painters such as Piero della Francesca, Melozzo da Forlì, and Marco Palmezzano. As a side note, the "M" logo used by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is taken from De divina proportione. “ The Ancients, having taken into consideration the rigorous construction of the human body, elaborated all their works, as especially their holy temples, according to these proportions; for they found here the two principal figures without which no project is possible: the perfection of the circle, the principle of all regular bodies, and the equilateral square. ” —De divina proportione

Father's Day, or June 17 of this year, is in the middle of Argentinian winter. And like people do on wintery Sunday mornings, I was bundled up in bed with too many covers, pillows and comforters. Feeling good and not thinking about anything in particular, Father's Day was nowhere in the vicinity of my mind. My eleven year old son, Matías, came into the room with a handmade present for me. Up to this point, my Father's Day gift history was nothing unusual. Books, socks, hand-painted wooden spoons, the kind of thing any father would expect from his pre-teen son. So you can understand when I say I was bracing myself to fake excitement at my son's present. But this Father's Day was special. I didn't have to fake excitement. I was in fact excited beyond my own belief. Matí's handmade present was a complete alphabet drawn on an A4 paper. Grungy, childish, and sweeter than a ton of honey. He'd spent days making it, three-dimensioning the letters, wiggle-shadowing them. Incredible. A common annoyance for graphic designers is explaining to people, even those close to them, what they do for a living. You have to somehow make it understandable that you are a visual communicator, not an artist. Part of the problem is the fact that "graphic designer" and "visual communicator" are just not in the dictionary of standard professions out there. If you're a plumber, you can wrap all the duties of your job with 3.5 words: I'm a plumber. If you're a graphic designer, no wrapper, 3.5 or 300 words, will ever cover it. I've spent many hours throughout the years explaining to my own family and friends what I do for a living, but most of them still come back and ask what it is exactly that I do for dough. When you're a type designer, that problem magnifies itself considerably. When someone asks you what you do for a living, you start looking for the nearest exit, but none of the ones you can find is any good. All the one-line descriptions are vague, and every single one of them queues a long, one-sided conversation that usually ends with someone getting too drunk listening, or too tired of talking. Now imagine being a type designer, with a curious eleven year old son. The kid is curious as to why daddy keeps writing huge letters on the computer screen. Let's go play some ball, dad. As soon as I finish working, son. He looks over my shoulder and sees a big twirly H on the screen. To him it looks like a game, like I'm not working. And I have to explain it to him again. This Father's Day, my son gave me the one present that tells me he finally understands what I do for a living. Perhaps he is even comfortable with it, or curious enough about that he wants to try it out himself. Either way, it was the happiest Father's Day I've ever had, and I'm prouder of my son than of everything else I've done in my life. This is Matí's font. I hope you find it useful.

A Postmodern vernacular sanserif in 8 fonts Prosaic designed by Aurélien Vret is a Postmodern typographic tribute to the french vernacular signs created by local producers in order to directly market their products visible along the roads. These signs drawn with a brush on artisanal billboards do not respect any typographic rules. The construction of these letterforms is hybrid and does not respect any ductus. Nevertheless the use of certain tools provokes a certain mechanism in the development of letter shapes. It’s after many experiments with a flat brush, that’s these letterforms have been reconstructed and perfected by Aurélien Vret. This is the starting point for the development of an easily reproducible sanserif with different contemporary writing tools. From non-typographical references of Prosaic towards readability innovation The influence of the tool is revealed in the letterforms: angular counterforms contrasting to the smoothed external shapes. This formal contrast gives to Prosaic a good legibility in small sizes. These internal angles indirectly influenced by the tool, open the counterforms. In the past, to deal with phototype limitations in typeface production, some foundries modified the final design by adding ink traps. In our high resolution digital world, these ink traps — now fashionable among some designers — have little or no effect when literally added to any design. Should one see in it a tribute to the previous limitations? Difficult to say. Meanwhile, there are typeface designers such as Ladislas Mandel, Roger Excoffon, and Gerard Unger who have long tried to push the limits of readability by opening the counters of their typefaces. Whatever the technology, such design research for a large counters have a positive impact on visual perception of typefaces in a small body text. The innovative design of counter-forms of the Prosaic appears in this second approach. Itself reinforced by an exaggerated x-height as if attempting to go beyond the formal limits of the Latin typography. It is interesting to note how the analysis of a non-typographical letters process has led to the development of a new typographic concept by improving legibility in small sizes. Disconnected to typical typographic roots in its elaboration, Prosaic is somewhat unclassifiable. The formal result could easily be described as a sturdy Postmodern humanistic sanserif! Humanistic sanserif because of its open endings. Sturdy because of its monumental x-height, featuring a “finish” mixing structured endings details. The visual interplay of angles and roundness produces a design without concessions. Finally, Prosaic is Postmodern in the sense it is a skeptical interpretation of vernacular sign paintings. Starting from a reconstruction of them in order to re-structure new forms with the objective of designing a new typeface. Referring to typographic analogy, the Prosaic Black is comparable to the Antique Olive Nord, while the thinner versions can refer to Frutiger or some versions of the Ladislas Mandel typefaces intended for telephone directories. Prosaic, a Postmodern vernacular sanserif Prosaic is radical, because it comes from a long artistic reflection of its designer, Aurélien Vret, as well a multidisciplinary artist. The Prosaic is also a dual tone typeface because it helps to serve the readability in very small sizes and brings a sturdy typographic power to large sizes. Prosaic, a Postmodern vernacular sanserif

DIN Next is a typeface family inspired by the classic industrial German engineering designs, DIN 1451 Engschrift and Mittelschrift. Akira Kobayashi began by revising these two faces-who names just mean ""condensed"" and ""regular"" before expanding them into a new family with seven weights (Light to Black). Each weight ships in three varieties: Regular, Italic, and Condensed, bringing the total number of fonts in the DIN Next family to 21. DIN Next is part of Linotype's Platinum Collection. Linotype has been supplying its customers with the two DIN 1451 fonts since 1980. Recently, they have become more popular than ever, with designers regularly asking for additional weights. The abbreviation ""DIN"" stands for ""Deutsches Institut für Normung e.V."", which is the German Institute for Industrial Standardization. In 1936 the German Standard Committee settled upon DIN 1451 as the standard font for the areas of technology, traffic, administration and business. The design was to be used on German street signs and house numbers. The committee wanted a sans serif, thinking it would be more legible, straightforward, and easy to reproduce. They did not intend for the design to be used for advertisements and other artistically oriented purposes. Nevertheless, because DIN 1451 was seen all over Germany on signs for town names and traffic directions, it became familiar enough to make its way onto the palettes of graphic designers and advertising art directors. The digital version of DIN 1451 would go on to be adopted and used by designers in other countries as well, solidifying its worldwide design reputation. There are many subtle differences in DIN Next's letters when compared with DIN 1451 original. These were added by Kobayashi to make the new family even more versatile in 21st-century media. For instance, although DIN 1451's corners are all pointed angles, DIN Next has rounded them all slightly. Even this softening is a nod to part of DIN 1451's past, however. Many of the signs that use DIN 1451 are cut with routers, which cannot make perfect corners; their rounded heads cut rounded corners best. Linotype's DIN 1451 Engschrift and Mittelschrift are certified by the German DIN Institute for use on official signage projects. Since DIN Next is a new design, these applications within Germany are not possible with it. However, DIN Next may be used for any other project, and it may be used for industrial signage in any other country! DIN Next has been tailored especially for graphic designers, but its industrial heritage makes it surprisingly functional in just about any application. The DIN Next family has been extended with seven Arabic weights and five Devanagari weights. The display of the Devanagari fonts on the website does not show all features of the font and therefore not all language features may be displayed correctly.

DIN Next is a typeface family inspired by the classic industrial German engineering designs, DIN 1451 Engschrift and Mittelschrift. Akira Kobayashi began by revising these two faces-who names just mean ""condensed"" and ""regular"" before expanding them into a new family with seven weights (Light to Black). Each weight ships in three varieties: Regular, Italic, and Condensed, bringing the total number of fonts in the DIN Next family to 21. DIN Next is part of Linotype's Platinum Collection. Linotype has been supplying its customers with the two DIN 1451 fonts since 1980. Recently, they have become more popular than ever, with designers regularly asking for additional weights. The abbreviation ""DIN"" stands for ""Deutsches Institut für Normung e.V."", which is the German Institute for Industrial Standardization. In 1936 the German Standard Committee settled upon DIN 1451 as the standard font for the areas of technology, traffic, administration and business. The design was to be used on German street signs and house numbers. The committee wanted a sans serif, thinking it would be more legible, straightforward, and easy to reproduce. They did not intend for the design to be used for advertisements and other artistically oriented purposes. Nevertheless, because DIN 1451 was seen all over Germany on signs for town names and traffic directions, it became familiar enough to make its way onto the palettes of graphic designers and advertising art directors. The digital version of DIN 1451 would go on to be adopted and used by designers in other countries as well, solidifying its worldwide design reputation. There are many subtle differences in DIN Next's letters when compared with DIN 1451 original. These were added by Kobayashi to make the new family even more versatile in 21st-century media. For instance, although DIN 1451's corners are all pointed angles, DIN Next has rounded them all slightly. Even this softening is a nod to part of DIN 1451's past, however. Many of the signs that use DIN 1451 are cut with routers, which cannot make perfect corners; their rounded heads cut rounded corners best. Linotype's DIN 1451 Engschrift and Mittelschrift are certified by the German DIN Institute for use on official signage projects. Since DIN Next is a new design, these applications within Germany are not possible with it. However, DIN Next may be used for any other project, and it may be used for industrial signage in any other country! DIN Next has been tailored especially for graphic designers, but its industrial heritage makes it surprisingly functional in just about any application. The DIN Next family has been extended with seven Arabic weights and five Devanagari weights. The display of the Devanagari fonts on the website does not show all features of the font and therefore not all language features may be displayed correctly.