It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that these letter shapes are familiar. They have the unmistakable color and weight of Cooper Black, Oswald Cooper's most famous typeface from 1921. What should be a surprise is that these letters are actually from George Auriol's Robur Noir (or Robur Black), published in France circa 1909 by the Peignot foundry as a bolder, solid counterpart to its popular Auriol typeface (1901). This face precedes Cooper Black by a dozen of years and a whole Great War. Cooper Black has always been a bit of a strange typographical apparition to anyone who tried to explain its original purpose, instant popularity in the 1920s, and major revival in the late 1960s. BB&S and Oswald Cooper PR aside, it is quite evident that the majority of Cooper Black's forms did not evolve from Cooper Old Style, as its originators claimed. And the claim that it collected various Art Nouveau elements is of course too ambiguous to be questioned. But when compared with Robur Noir, the "elements" in question can hardly be debated. The chronology of this "machine age" ad face in metal is amusing and stands as somewhat of a general index of post-Great War global industrial competition: - 1901: Peignot releases Auriol, based on the handwriting of George Auriol (the "quintessential Art Nouveau designer," according to Steven Heller and Louise Fili), and it becomes very popular. - 1909-1912: Peignot releases the Robur family of faces. The eight styles released are Robur Noir and its italic, a condensed version called Robur Noir Allongée (Elongated) and its italic, an outline version called Clair De Lune and its condensed/elongated, a lined/striped version called Robur Tigre, and its condensed/elongated counterpart. - 1914 to 1918: World War One uses up economies on both sides of the Atlantic, claims Georges Peignot with a bullet to the forehead, and non-war industry stalls for 4 years. - 1921: BB&S releases Cooper Black with a lot of hype to hungry publishing, manufacturing and advertising industries. - 1924: Robert Middleton releases Ludlow Black. - 1924: The Stevens Shanks foundry, the British successor to the Figgins legacy, releases its own exact copies of Robur Noir and Robur Noir Allongée, alongside a lined version called Royal Lining. - 1925: Oswald Cooper releases his Cooper Black Condensed, with similar math to Robur Noir Allongée (20% reduction in width and vectical stroke). - 1925: Monotype releases Frederick Goudy's Goudy Heavy, an "answer to Cooper Black". Type historians gravely note it as the "teacher steals from his student" scandal. Goudy Heavy Condensed follows a few years later. - 1928: Linotype releases Chauncey Griffith's Pabst Extra Bold. The condensed counterpart is released in 1931. When type production technologies changed and it was time to retool the old faces for the Typositor age, Cooper Black was a frontrunning candidate, while Robur Noir was all but erased from history. This was mostly due to its commercial revival by flourishing and media-driven music and advertising industries. By the late 1960s variations and spinoffs of Cooper Black were in every typesetting catalog. In the early- to mid-1970s, VGC, wanting to capitalize on the Art Nouveau onslaught, published an uncredited exact copy of Robur Black under the name Skylark. But that also went with the dust of history and PR when digital tech came around, and Cooper Black was once again a prime retooling candidate. The "old fellows stole all of our best ideas" indeed. So almost a hundred years after its initial fizz, Robur is here in digital form, to reclaim its rightful position as the inspiration for, and the best alternative to, Cooper Black. Given that its forms date back to the turn of the century, a time when foundry output had a closer relationship to calligraphic and humanist craft, its shapes are truer to brush strokes and much more idiosyncratic than Cooper Black in their totality's construct. Robur and Robur Italic come in all popular font formats. Language support includes Western, Central and Eastern European character sets, as well as Baltic, Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish, and Celtic/Welsh languages. A range of complementary f-ligatures and a few alternates letters are included within the fonts.

It is a cute font that imaged a circle that was popular among young Japanese girls in the 1970s and 1980s, plus elements of the current round character as well. The momentum of the circle fads of the 70s and 80s back then seemed to have been great, and it seems that there were schools that prohibited the use of the round letters as students were all writing, too. In addition, a circular letter contest was held, and it seems that the work selected from many entries was released as a phototype. I tried to round up to the limit while incorporating the elements of that circle and the elements of the round letters that the current Japanese girls would write. It corresponds to Hiragana · Katakana · Alphabet · Numerals · Symbols · Kanji(chinese characters). You can also write vertically. You can use it easily, because it contains JIS first · second level, and IBM extended Kanji(about 6700chinese characters). I think that it is an eye-catching design although it lacks a little on readability, so it is also recommended to use it point-wise. The name "Hachimaru" is a thing that touched "80" in the 1980s. The 80s is one of my favorite times. I think that the power to young girls 'Kawaii' such as circle letters, fancy goods and idols was a very strong era. I hope I can express even a little "Kawaii" culture of that unique and unique 80's Japan. ＜「はちまるポップ」紹介文＞ 1970年〜80年代に、日本の若い女の子の間で流行した丸文字をイメージし、現在の丸文字の要素もプラスしたかわいいフォントです。 70〜80年代当時の丸文字の流行の勢いは凄かったらしく、学生さんもみな書いていたそうで、丸文字の使用を禁止する学校もあったそうです。 また、丸文字のコンテストが行われ、多数の応募から選ばれた作品が写植書体としてリリースされたこともあるそうです。 その丸文字の要素と、現在の日本の女の子が書くような丸文字の要素も取り込みながら、極限まで丸っこくしてみました。 ひらがな・カタカナ・アルファベット・数字・記号類・漢字に対応しており、縦書きもできます。 漢字はJIS第一水準・第二水準・IBM拡張漢字に対応（約6700文字）しているので、使い勝手も良いかと思います。 可読性には少々欠けますが目を引くデザインだと思うので、ポイント的に使うのもオススメです。 名称の「はちまる」は80年代の「80」をもじったものです。 80年代は私の好きな時代の1つです。丸文字をはじめ、ファンシーグッズやアイドルなど、若い女の子の「かわいい」へのパワーがとても強い時代だったんだなぁと思います。 その個性的で独特な80年代日本の「かわいい」カルチャーを少しでも表現できてればいいなぁと思います。 ＜スタイルカテゴリー＞ 手書き風、丸ゴシック

Francesco Canovaro designed Asgard as a way to mix his passion for the raw energy of extra bold sans serif typography with the expressivity of high contrast and calligraphy-inspired letterforms. He built the typeface around a strong geometric sans skeleton, to make the letters feel solid and powerful while using wood-type vernacular solutions to solve density through high contrast details. The typeface name was chosen as an homage to the mythical homeland of the Norse Gods, evoking a land of fierce warriors, power and strength - but also of divine, delicate beauty. Thanks to the help of Andrea Tartarelli and Mario de Libero the original design was extended along with the design space, expanding the number of weights and widths with a "workhorse typeface" approach, and adding also a slanted axis to experiment with italics. The result is a super-family of 9 styles of 8 weights for a total of 72 fonts, each coming with an extended set of 968 glyphs covering over 200 languages using Latin, Greek and Cyrillic scripts. The three variation axes (width, weight, slant) are also all accessible in a variable font version that is included with the whole family. This gives the designer a full range of options for typesetting, with the Roman and Fit widths providing basic display and text-sized alternatives, and the Wide width adding more display and titling options. The inclusion of backslant italic styles gives Asgard an extra chance to add its voice to the typographic palette. To complement this, all Asgard fonts have been given a full set of Open Type Features including standard and discretionary ligatures, stylistic sets, positional numerals and case sensitive forms. Dynamic and expressive, Asgard is a super-family that manages to look brutal and refined at the same time, quoting the vernacular typographic practices of letterpress print while expressing the contemporary zeitgeist. • Suggested uses: perfect for contemporary branding and logo design, bold editorial design, dynamic packaging and countless other projects. • 73 styles: 8 weights + 8 italics + 8 backslant italics, 3 different widths + 1 variable font. • 968 glyphs in each weight. • Useful OpenType features: Access All Alternates, Contextual Alternates, Case-Sensitive Forms, Glyph Composition / Decomposition, Discretionary Ligatures, Denominators, Fractions, Kerning, Standard Ligatures, Lining Figures, Localized Forms, Mark Positioning, Mark to Mark Positioning, Alternate Annotation Forms, Numerators, Oldstyle Figures, Ordinals, Scientific Inferiors, Stylistic Set 1, Stylistic Set 2, Stylistic Set 3, Subscript, Superscript, Slashed Zero • 219 languages supported (extended Latin, Greek and Cyrillic alphabets): English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Russian, German, Javanese (Latin), Vietnamese, Turkish, Italian, Polish, Afaan Oromo, Azeri, Tagalog, Sundanese (Latin), Filipino, Moldovan, Romanian, Indonesian, Dutch, Cebuano, Igbo, Malay, Uzbek (Latin), Kurdish (Latin), Swahili, Greek, Hungarian, Czech, Haitian Creole, Hiligaynon, Afrikaans, Somali, Zulu, Serbian, Swedish, Bulgarian, Shona, Quechua, Albanian, Catalan, Chichewa, Ilocano, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Neapolitan, Xhosa, Tshiluba, Slovak, Danish, Gikuyu, Finnish, Norwegian, Sicilian, Sotho (Southern), Kirundi, Tswana, Sotho (Northern), Belarusian (Latin), Turkmen (Latin), Bemba, Lombard, Lithuanian, Tsonga, Wolof, Jamaican, Dholuo, Galician, Ganda, Low Saxon, Waray-Waray, Makhuwa, Bikol, Kapampangan (Latin), Aymara, Zarma, Ndebele, Slovenian, Tumbuka, Venetian, Genoese, Piedmontese, Swazi, Zazaki, Latvian, Nahuatl, Silesian, Bashkir (Latin), Sardinian, Estonian, Afar, Cape Verdean Creole, Maasai, Occitan, Tetum, Oshiwambo, Basque, Welsh, Chavacano, Dawan, Montenegrin, Walloon, Asturian, Kaqchikel, Ossetian (Latin), Zapotec, Frisian, Guadeloupean Creole, Q’eqchi’, Karakalpak (Latin), Crimean Tatar (Latin), Sango, Luxembourgish, Samoan, Maltese, Tzotzil, Fijian, Friulian, Icelandic, Sranan, Wayuu, Papiamento, Aromanian, Corsican, Breton, Amis, Gagauz (Latin), Māori, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Alsatian, Atayal, Kiribati, Seychellois Creole, Võro, Tahitian, Scottish Gaelic, Chamorro, Greenlandic (Kalaallisut), Kashubian, Faroese, Rarotongan, Sorbian (Upper Sorbian), Karelian (Latin), Romansh, Chickasaw, Arvanitic (Latin), Nagamese Creole, Saramaccan, Ladin, Kaingang, Palauan, Sami (Northern Sami), Sorbian (Lower Sorbian), Drehu, Wallisian, Aragonese, Mirandese, Tuvaluan, Xavante, Zuni, Montagnais, Hawaiian, Marquesan, Niuean, Yapese, Vepsian, Bislama, Hopi, Megleno-Romanian, Creek, Aranese, Rotokas, Tokelauan, Mohawk, Onĕipŏt, Warlpiri, Cimbrian, Sami (Lule Sami), Jèrriais, Arrernte, Murrinh-Patha, Kala Lagaw Ya, Cofán, Gwich’in, Seri, Sami (Southern Sami), Istro-Romanian, Wik-Mungkan, Anuta, Cornish, Sami (Inari Sami), Yindjibarndi, Noongar, Hotcąk (Latin), Meriam Mir, Manx, Shawnee, Gooniyandi, Ido, Wiradjuri, Hän, Ngiyambaa, Delaware, Potawatomi, Abenaki, Esperanto, Folkspraak, Interglossa, Interlingua, Latin, Latino sine Flexione, Lojban, Novial, Occidental, Old Icelandic, Old Norse, Slovio (Latin), Volapük.