The font Speech Bubbles offers a convenient way to integrate text and image. While the font can be used to design comics, it also gives the typographer a tool to make text speak – to give words conversational dynamics and to emphasize visually the sound of the message. The font includes a total of seventy outlines and seventy bubble backgrounds selected from a survey of historic forms. What follows is a discussion of my process researching and developing the font, as well as a few user suggestions. My work on the Speech Bubbles font began with historic research. My first resource was a close friend who is a successful German comic artist. I had previously worked with him to transform his lettering art into an OpenType font. This allowed his publishing house to easily translate cartoons from German to other languages without the need to use another font, like Helvetica rounded. My friend showed me the most exciting, outstanding and graphically appealing speech bubbles from his library. I looked at early strips from Schulz (Peanuts), Bill Waterson (Calvin & Hobes), Hergé (TinTin), Franquin, as well as Walt Disney. The most inspiring was the early Krazy Kat and Ignatz (around 1915) from George Herriman. I also studied 1980’s classics Dave Gibbon’s Watchmen, Frank Miller’s Ronin and Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vandetta. Contemporary work was also a part of my research—like Liniers from Macanudo and work of Ralf König. With this overview in mind I began to work from scratch. I tried to distill the typical essence of each author’s or era’s speech bubbles style into my font. In the end I limited my work down to the seventy strongest images. An important aspect of the design process was examining each artist’s speech bubble outlines. In some cases they are carefully inked, as in most of the 80’s work. In others, such as with Herriman, they are fast drawn with a rough impetus. The form can be dynamic and round (Schultz) with a variable stroke width, or straight inked with no form contrast (Hergé). Since most outlines also carry the character of the tool that they are made with, I chose to separate the outline from the speech bubble fill-in or background. 
This technical decision offers interesting creative possibilities. For example, the font user can apply a slight offset from fill-in to outline, as it is typical to early comic strips, in which there are often print misalignments. Also, rather than work in the classic white background with black outline, one can work with colors. Many tonal outcomes are possible by contrasting the fill-in and outline color. The Speech Bubbles font offers a dynamic and quick way to flavor information while conveying a message. How is something said? Loudly? With a tint of shyness? Does a rather small message take up a lot of space? The font’s extensive survey of historic comic designs in an assembly that is useful for both pure comic purposes or more complex typographic projects. Use Speech Bubbles to give your message the right impact in your poster, ad or composition.

TT Mussels useful links: Specimen | Graphic presentation | Customization options About TT Mussels: The TT Mussels font family is the successor of such popular fonts as Bender and TT Squares. At the same time, TT Mussels has a number of fundamental differences that make it a unique font family that stands out from other octagonal typefaces. When designing TT Mussels, we paid great attention to the possibility of imposing large arrays of text, and we can responsibly state that TT Mussels is a rare type of technological text fonts. To go along with the rest, we've created a stencil version of the typeface, in which the location of the incisions changes according to their thickness. In total, the TT Mussels font family consists of 36 faces, which include among other things stylistic alternatives, ligatures, and also implements a broad support for OpenType features: case, frac, ordn, sups, sinf, numr, dnom, onum, tnum, pnum, liga, dlig, salt, ss01. Dynamic contrast is widely implemented in TT Mussels. It is most noticeable in the Black typeface, where the ratio of the thickness of the vertical strokes to the horizontal strokes is approximately two to one. For the Thin typeface, the thickness of the vertical strokes is already consistent with the thickness of the horizontal strokes. You can also find other signs of respect for traditional text fonts in the TT Mussels design, such as the trace of pen movement which is historically typical for antiquas. For example, in the letter M from the Black face, we can first see a thin stroke, then a thick diagonal stroke followed by a thin diagonal stroke, and a finishing bold vertical stroke. As in the case of dynamic contrast, this effect gradually disappears when approaching thin faces. In thick faces, in places such as the “armpits” of the letters MN? or the junctions of the diagonals of WVvw, there are visual compensators that brighten the bold typefaces. As the thickness of typefaces moves from thick to thin, the dimensions and conceptual values of compensators change, and in thin typefaces they completely disappear. TT Mussels language support: Acehnese, Afar, Albanian, Alsatian, Aragonese, Arumanian, Asu, Aymara, Banjar, Basque, Belarusian (cyr), Bemba, Bena, Betawi, Bislama, Boholano, Bosnian (cyr), Bosnian (lat), Breton, Bulgarian (cyr), Cebuano, Chamorro, Chiga, Colognian, Cornish, Corsican, Cree, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Embu, English, Erzya, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Gaelic, Gagauz (lat), Galician, German, Gusii, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiri Motu, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Innu-aimun, Interlingua, Irish, Italian, Javanese, Judaeo-Spanish, Judaeo-Spanish, Kalenjin, Karachay-Balkar (lat), Karaim (lat), Karakalpak (lat), Kashubian, Khasi, Khvarshi, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kongo, Kumyk, Kurdish (lat), Ladin, Latvian, Laz, Leonese, Lithuanian, Luganda, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Macedonian, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malay, Manx, Maori, Mauritian Creole, Minangkabau, Moldavian (lat), Montenegrin (lat), Mordvin-moksha, Morisyen, Nahuatl, Nauruan, Ndebele, Nias, Nogai, Norwegian, Nyankole, Occitan, Oromo, Palauan, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rheto-Romance, Rohingya, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Russian, Rusyn, Rwa, Salar, Samburu, Samoan, Sango, Sangu, Scots, Sena, Serbian (cyr), Serbian (lat), Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Shona, Slovak, Slovenian, Soga, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Swiss German, Swiss German, Tagalog, Tahitian, Taita, Tatar, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Tsonga, Tswana, Turkish, Turkmen (lat), Ukrainian, Uyghur, Vepsian, Volapük, Võro, Vunjo, Xhosa, Zaza, Zulu.

Bodoni Ferrara™ Fashionable, Luxury Heritage: The Original Bodoni Ferrara Sculpted from hi-res photos and scans of Bodoni's original Ferrara Font—his 1818 Manuale Tipografico and 1768 specimens. It has never before been available. This cut of Bodoni specially selected by Dave Lawrence from rare book specimens. Part of the California Type Foundry Origin Series. 3 Display Fonts in One!! And 6+ style mixes. Bodoni's 1st Draft - Transitional Serif Bodoni was often inspired by French type designs. His first draft of Ferrara was inspired by Pierre Simon Fournier. But Bodoni added his own Italian sensibilities. Bododni’s first, transitional style can pair with humanist sans, and transitional fonts. Bodoni's Rework - Modern Serif Later, Bodoni reworked Ferrara to match the later neo-classic style or modern serif of Firmin Didot¹. Bodoni’s modern style can pair with geometric sans, grotesque sans, neo-grotesque sans, gothic sans, copperplate script, . Informal On™ - Informal Mode by CAL Type Foundry This can pair with “infant” fonts. Geometric sans, and other sans or serifs with one-storied a’s. + Bodoni’s Tivoli a for another option! Works great with Fournier¹ fonts and grotesques, since the terminals will match. Font Pairing Guide This font includes a 78 page Ferrara Pairing Guide. This book shows you 131 pairings with text fonts. 47 pairings with subheader fonts! We want to help you get more out of your font collection. Design Features • Subtle forward angle (0.5-1.5°) makes Ferrara more lively and engaging than most Bodoni or Didot fonts. • Round curves make this font feel letter-pressed. • Bodoni's original tall x-height and slightly condensed proportions: great for headlines, where space is at a premium. • Better uppercase. Uppercase punctuation for design apps. • Proportional oldstyle and lining figures, both modern style and transitional numbers. Every pair of numbers is kerned for display sizes: no unsightly gaps! • Multiple special symbols for whenever you need a design to pop, including 3 of Bodoni’s amazing ampersands. Language Features Latin standard for western European and other languages. +Advanced support for: German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French. Special, uppercase umlauts for titles! Compare to metal Bauer¹ Bodoni! Special context kerning for French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French, to allow better better words like L'Angelique & “¿Nosotros?”. This kerning gets rid of unsightly gaps between “¿ and other combinations. Can’t Find the Pairing Guide? Can't find the pairing guide? Google “California Type Foundry” and grab the pairing guide. Get another free pro font while you’re there! Ferrara: many sizes, styles, moods and situations. It's a classic, fashionable font for display, headlines, and titles. Grab Ferrara today! ----------- ¹Trademarks of their respective owners. Ferrara™ is a trademark of the California Type Foundry.

Minnak, as a whole geometric display type is our take on Square Kufic (Makili) style Latin script fonts, comes in eleven weights with linear progression. It is an Uniwidth typeface at the core. From Hairline to Black, all multiplexed weights take up the same space in width and can be used interchangeably. Supports wide range of Open Type features, with many stylistic alternates in 12 context. Minnak is also have a close relation with pixel fonts, because in spite of its based on Makili forms, it all started as a pixel font in the drawing stage before further steps came into play. The key difference between Minnak and Makili style is that the latter must have the exact square counters with no diagonal strokes, and any other components of a letterform must conform to be proportional. Such style-specific requirements determine the overall dimensions of the glyphs and therefore, there can be only minor differences between the typefaces. In Minnak, counters are rectangular because of its narrow and condensed proportions, but the Makili form influence is still manifest. This impression is best confirmed with Medium weight where negative spaces and stem thickness are equal. Contrast and virtually no optical correction were presented, as characteristic of its genre had to have equal horizontal and vertical line thicknesses. As per the minimal and authentic look of the type, all glyphs are drawn as straight or only as 45-degree diagonal strokes. The representation of the ‘diagonalless’ approach is preserved by stylistic alternatives, making its similarity in visual aesthetics clearly visible. Marks and punctuation is another feature that doesn’t follow the strict rules of the origin style. Although not a pixel font, all building parts of the glyphs in Minnak share the same unit precision as they are designed with pixel equivalents in mind. Even space characters are designed to match glyph widths, meeting the demands of certain typesetting or multi-line lettering compositions. With its Pseudo Ancient and Runic alternates, extention parts and ornaments included in all weights, Minnak is suitable for branding, logo and monogram designs, the screen titles and headlines, packaging, posters, book covers and more, where it shines at big sizes. Its pixel font-like appearance makes it a significant choice for the modern compositions. Thanks to mostly uniform width design, it is possible to use Minnak also as a system for lettering. This feature can be used as vertical fitting of the letters between the lines. As a casual expression in Turkish, “Minnak” is one of the seven typeface designs in Esintype's ancient scripts of Anatolia project, Tituli Anatolian series — representing Seljuk period in the medieval Anatolia and their tradition of architectural stone ornamentation.

Gundrada ML was inspired by the lettering on the tomb of Gundrada de Warenne. She was buried at Southover Church at Lewes, Sussex, in the south of England in 1085. The Latin inscription on her tomb, STIRPS GUNDRADA DUCUM, meaning “Gundrada, descendant of the Duke” may have led to the speculation that she was the daughter of William, Duke of Normandy and bastard son of Robert the Devil of Normandy and Arletta, daughter of a tanner in Falaise. In 1066 William defeated Harold at the Battle of Hastings and was crowned William I of England. More commonly known as William the Conquerer, he commissioned a string of forts around the kingdom and charged trusted Norman Barons to control the contentious Anglo-Saxon population. William de Warenne, husband of Gundrada, was one of these Barons. There has also been the suggestion that Gundrada may have been the daughter of William’s wife, Matilda of Flanders, by a previous marriage. According to the Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, Oxford, England 1921-22), both of these contentions are in dispute. Searching the past of a thousand years ago is like wandering in a heavy fog: facts are only dimly in view. Regardless, I know that I found these letterforms immediately engaging in their simplicity. Unadorned and unsophisticated, they have a direct honesty that rests well in the company of humanistic sans serifs like Franklin Gothic or Gill Sans, appealing to a contemporary sensibility. The lettering on the tomb is in upper case only. Although Gundrada does not sound Norman French to me, her husband certainly and her father probably were Norman French. Nonetheless, the man that carved her tombstone was probably Anglo-Saxon, like most of the people. For that reason, we are quite comfortable with a fairly generic lower case from an Anglo-Saxon document of the time. The time was a time of transition, of contending language influences. This font reflects some of that tension. Features 1. Multi-Lingual Font with 389 glyphs and 698 Kerning Pairs. 2. OpenType GSUB layout features: onum, dlig, liga, salt & hist. 3. Tabular Figures and Alternate Old-Style Figures. 4. Alternate Ruled Caps (line above and below, matching to brackets). 5. Central Europe, Western Europe, Turkish and Baltic Code Pages. 6. Additional accents for Cornish and Old Gaelic. 7. Stylistic alternates A, E, y and #. 8. Ligatures ST, Th, fi and fl. 9. Historic alternate longs. The zip package includes two versions of the font at no extra charge. There is an OTF version which is in Open PS (Post Script Type 1) format and a TTF version which is in Open TT (True Type)format. Use whichever works best for your applications.

The Eskapade font family is the result of Alisa Nowak’s research into Roman and German blackletter forms, mainly Fraktur letters. The idea was to adapt these broken forms into a contemporary family instead of creating a faithful revival of a historical typeface. On one hand, the ten normal Eskapade styles are conceived for continuous text in books and magazines with good legibility in smaller sizes. On the other hand, the six angled Eskapade Fraktur styles capture the reader’s attention in headlines with its mixture of round and straight forms as seen in ‘e’, ‘g’, and ‘o’. Eskapade works exceptionally well for branding, logotypes, and visual identities, for editorials like magazines, fanzines, or posters, and for packaging. Eskapade roman adopts a humanist structure, but is more condensed than other oldstyle serifs. The reason behind this stems from the goal of closely resembling the Fraktur style to create harmony in mixed text settings. Legibility is enhanced by its low contrast between thick and thin strokes and its tall x-height. Eskapade offers an airy and light typographic colour with its smooth design. Eskapade italic is based on the Cancellaresca script and shows some particularities in its condensed and round forms. This structure also provided the base for Eskapade Fraktur italic. Eskapade Fraktur is more contrasted and slightly bolder than the usual darkness of a regular weight. The innovative Eskapade Fraktur italic, equally based on the Cancellaresca script previously mentioned, is secondarily influenced by the Sütterlin forms — an unique script practiced in Germany in the vanishingly short period between 1915 and 1941. The new ornaments are also hybrid Sütterlin forms to fit with the smooth roman styles. Although there are many Fraktur-style typefaces available today, they usually lack italics, and their italics are usually slanted uprights rather than proper italics. This motivated extensive experimentation with the italic Fraktur shapes and resulted in Eskapade Fraktur’s unusual and interesting solutions. In addition to standard capitals, it offers a second set of more decorative capitals with double-stroke lines to intensify creative application and encourage experimental use. The Thin and Black Fraktur styles are meant for display sizes (headlines, posters, branding, and signage). A typeface with this much tension needs to keep a good harmony between strokes and counters, so Eskapade Black has amplified inktraps and a more dynamic structure seen in the contrast between straight and round forms. These qualities make the family bolder and more enticing, especially with the included uppercase alternates. The Fraktur’s black weights are strident, refusing to let the white of the paper win the tug-of-war. It also won’t give away its secrets: Is it modern or historic, edgy or amicable, beguiling ornamentation or brutish presentation? That all depends on how the radically expanded Eskapade family is used, but its 16 fonts certainly aren’t tame.