Rian Hughes’ 15th collection of fonts, “112 Hours”, is entirely dedicated to numbers. Culled from a myriad of sources – clock faces, tickets, watches house numbers – it is an eclectic and wide-ranging set. Each font contains only numerals and related punctuation – no letters. A new book has been designed by Hughes to show the collection, and includes sample settings, complete character sets, source material and an introduction. This is available print-to-order on Blurb in paperback and hardback: http://www.blurb.com/b/5539073-112-hours-hardback http://www.blurb.com/b/5539045-112-hours-paperback From the introduction: The idea for this, the fifteenth Device Fonts collection, began when I came across an online auction site dedicated to antique clocks. I was mesmerized by the inventive and bizarre numerals on their faces. Shorn of the need to extend the internal logic of a typeface through the entire alphabet, the designers of these treasures were free to explore interesting forms and shapes that would otherwise be denied them. Given this horological starting point, I decided to produce 12 fonts, each featuring just the numbers from 1 to 12 and, where appropriate, a small set of supporting characters — in most cases, the international currency symbols, a colon, full stop, hyphen, slash and the number sign. 10, 11 and 12 I opted to place in the capital A, B and C slots. Each font is shown in its entirety here. I soon passed 12, so the next logical finish line was 24. Like a typographic Jack Bauer, I soon passed that too -— the more I researched, the more I came across interesting and unique examples that insisted on digitization, or that inspired me to explore some new design direction. The sources broadened to include tickets, numbering machines, ecclesiastical brass plates and more. Though not derived from clock faces, I opted to keep the 1-12 conceit for consistency, which allowed me to design what are effectively numerical ligatures. I finally concluded one hundred fonts over my original estimate at 112. Even though it’s not strictly divisible by 12, the number has a certain symmetry, I reasoned, and was as good a place as any to round off the project. An overview reveals a broad range that nonetheless fall into several loose categories. There are fairly faithful revivals, only diverging from their source material to even out inconsistencies and regularize weighting or shape to make them more functional in a modern context; designs taken directly from the source material, preserving all the inky grit and character of the original; designs that are loosely based on a couple of numbers from the source material but diverge dramatically for reasons of improved aesthetics or mere whim; and entirely new designs with no historical precedent. As projects like this evolve (and, to be frank, get out of hand), they can take you in directions and to places you didn’t envisage when you first set out. Along the way, I corresponded with experts in railway livery, and now know about the history of cab side and smokebox plates; I travelled to the Musée de l’imprimerie in Nantes, France, to examine their numbering machines; I photographed house numbers in Paris, Florence, Venice, Amsterdam and here in the UK; I delved into my collection of tickets, passes and printed ephemera; I visited the Science Museum in London, the Royal Signals Museum in Dorset, and the Museum of London to source early adding machines, war-time telegraphs and post-war ration books. I photographed watches at Worthing Museum, weighing scales large enough to stand on in a Brick Lane pub, and digital station clocks at Baker Street tube station. I went to the London Under-ground archive at Acton Depot, where you can see all manner of vintage enamel signs and woodblock type; I photographed grocer’s stalls in East End street markets; I dug out old clocks I recalled from childhood at my parents’ place, examined old manual typewriters and cash tills, and crouched down with a torch to look at my electricity meter. I found out that Jane Fonda kicked a policeman, and unusually for someone with a lifelong aversion to sport, picked up some horse-racing jargon. I share some of that research here. In many cases I have not been slavish about staying close to the source material if I didn’t think it warranted it, so a close comparison will reveal differences. These changes could be made for aesthetic reasons, functional reasons (the originals didn’t need to be set in any combination, for example), or just reasons of personal taste. Where reference for the additional characters were not available — which was always the case with fonts derived from clock faces — I have endeavored to design them in a sympathetic style. I may even extend some of these to the full alphabet in the future. If I do, these number-only fonts could be considered as experimental design exercises: forays into form to probe interesting new graphic possibilities.

The Neue Haas Unica™ family is an extended, reimagined version of the Haas Unica® design, a Helvetica® alternative that achieved near mythical status in the type community before it virtually disappeared. Originally released in 1980 by the Haas Type Foundry and designed by Team ’77 — André Gürtler, Erich Gschwind and Christian Mengelt— for phototypesetting technology of the day, the design was never successfully updated for today’s digital environments – until now. Toshi Omagari of Monotype Studio has given this classic a fresh, digital facelift with more weights, more languages and more letters to meet today’s digital and print needs. Available in 18 styles, the Neue Haas Unica family is remarkably appropriate for a wide range of applications, possessing a delicate gradation of weights and clear character shapes. The family's lighter weights are perfect for headlines and other large settings, as well as small blocks of copy at typical text sizes. The regular, medium and bold weights know no boundaries and the heavy and black designs are ideal for when typography needs to be powerful and commanding. Like the Neue Helvetica and Univers Next typefaces, the Neue Haas Unica family can be used just about anywhere – or for any project. In addition to its 9 tailored weights and complementary italics, the Neue Haas Unica family also possesses additional characters for Eastern and Central European, Greek and Cyrillic language support, which did not exist in the original design. A cosmopolitan typeface for today's modern, discerning design needs, the Neue Haas Unica collection is a new classic in the making—one that every designer should surely have at their disposal.

Clean and welcoming, the distinct look of Yorkten is remarkably satisfying to the eye. Straight to the point, Yorkton features a fashionable, geometric composition with angled main stems. There are no fewer than fifty-four fonts in the family, all of which are characterized by one of three widths – extended, normal or condensed. Each individual subfamily is equipped with eight weights from Thin to Black with respective Italics, giving Yorkten a breathtaking range of fonts to boast. The greater value for you, though, is its members’ ability to work well together. With a deep toolbox of weights and widths to choose from, this family provides you with significant value and a broad number of design solutions, making sure you have the tools you need for each challenge. So where should you use the font? Jeremy Dooley designed Yorkten’s underpinning structure to be compact. Combined with its superior features and terrific legibility, this versatile font can be used effectively for many jobs, whether in print or on screen. Use it freely for e-books and apps. Yorkten is particularly great for headlines, banners, posters, and websites. As with all insigne fonts, fonts that are well received by the market are expanded into future variants such as rounded or slab serif types. Yorkten’s later expansions will increase the versatility and functionality of the family. There’s no need to wait for these future releases, though. This new face already complements a number of other insigne faces, such as Grayfel, Look, or the Cabrito Superfamily. So what are you waiting for? Get Yorkten today and bask in the rich potential it offers! Get Yorkten and luxuriate in its straightforward multifunctionality!

With the publication of the “Today Sans Now” Elsner+Flake extends its offering of the “Today Sans Serif” type family, developed in 1988 by Volker Küster for Scangraphic, by another cut so that the gradation of the stroke width can now be more finely calibrated. The type complement is available for 72 Latin-based languages as well as Cyrillic. Where available, small caps were integrated, and mathematical symbols as well as fractions were included. In order to make the symbols for text applications in regard to headlines more flexible, the insertions which were formerly added, for technical reasons in order to sharpen the corners, were eliminated, and the optical size adjustments of the vertical and diagonal stem endings (I, v, H, V) to the horizontal bars (z, Z) were scaled back. Already since the end of 1984, Volker Küster experimented with broad sticks of chalk and a broad felt pen in order to develop a new sans serif typeface which, in the interest of easy legibility, would be built on the basic structures and proportions of the Renaissance-Antiqua. Using a normal angle of writing, his experiments lead to the form structure of the characters: a small contrast between bold and light weights, serif-like beginning and end strokes in some of the lower-case characters, and the typical, left-leaning slant of all round lower-case letters and the typical left-leaning axis of all round letter forms. In this way, a rhythmization of a line of type was achieved which created a lively image without being “noisy”. With this concept, Volker Küster has enlarged the Sans Serif by a distinctive, trend-setting form variation.

Cairoli was originally cast by Italian foundry Nebiolo in 1928, as a license of a design by Wagner & Schmidt, known as Neue moderne Grotesk. Its solid grotesque design (later developed as Aurora by Weber and Akzidenz-Grotesk by Haas) was extremely successful: it anticipated the versatility of sans serif superfamilies thanks to its range of weights and widths, while still retaining some eccentricities from end-of the century lead and wood type. In 2020 the Italiantype team directed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini and Mario De Libero decided to produce a revival of Cairoli, extending the original weight and width range and developing both a faithful Classic version and a Now variant. The Cairoli Classic family keeps the original low x-height range, very display-oriented, and normalizes the design while emphasizing the original peculiarities like the hook cuts in curved letters, the high-waisted uppercase R and the squared ovals of the letterforms. Cairoli Now is developed with an higher x-height, more suited for text and digital use, and adds to the original design deeper ink-traps and round punctuation, while slightly correcting the curves for a more contemporary look. Born as an exercise in subtlety and love for lost letterforms, Cairoli stands, like its lead ancestor from a century ago, at the crossroads between artsy craftsmanship and industrial needs. Its deviations from the norm are small enough to give it personality without affecting readability, and the expanded weight and width range make it into a workhorse superfamily with open type features (alternates, stylistic sets, positional numbers) and coverage of over two hundred languages using the latin extended alphabet.

EngelNewSans is sans serif family of 12 weights and an upgrade of the typeface Engel also published by Die Gestalten Verlag. The project began with an extension to the original Engel character set and freshening up the typeface to suit the OpenType format. EngelNewSerif came about as a sibling to EngelNewSans as a corresponding serif family also of 12 weights, matching those of EngelNewSans. Both families are designed for a wide usage in running text and headlines. EngelNewSans is an evolved version of the original Engel typeface, which undergone improvements to the individual letterforms and the overall look which resulted in this sans serif type family with a more mature confident character and with softer, rounder and more harmonious shapes. The characteristics between the two could perhaps, very fittingly, be compared to a person showing different sides to their personality at different stages in life. With EngelNewSans portraying the more mature role while the original Engel shows traits of a cool teenager with rough edges, not yet fully developed. To make the light weights function with serifs attached for EngelNewSerif, the same low stroke contrast as seen in EngelNewSans was applied. Further discovery found that the serifs and the stem width had to be optically similar for the light weights not to appear too fragile. In the heavy weights however, the stroke contrast was higher than in the Sans versions, this was done to open up the counters and make room for the serifs to breathe. The intention of the families is to motivate an element of play and give the designer a larger selection to work with.

The Geometry Pro family has been designed to be the final word in purely geometric fonts, and this rounded Script sub-family is a nod to the 50s style of connected logomarks. Words set with both the Regular and the Alternate (with its more flourished capitals and alternate stem connections) can be extended by using the underscore character between letters. You can freely mix and match glyphs from both fonts to create a little bit of variety, and finding that perfect combination. For a matching set of capitals (and disconnected lowercase letters): check out the Regular weights of the Geometry Soft Pro family. All the Geometry Pro fonts are strictly geometric (as drawn with a compass and a ruler fixed to 90 and 45 degree angles) but they are not slavishly modular. ALL fonts from CheapProFonts have very extensive language support: They contain some unusual diacritic letters (some of which are contained in the Latin Extended-B Unicode block) supporting: Cornish, Filipino (Tagalog), Guarani, Luxembourgian, Malagasy, Romanian, Ulithian and Welsh. They also contain all glyphs in the Latin Extended-A Unicode block (which among others cover the Central European and Baltic areas) supporting: Afrikaans, Belarusian (Lacinka), Bosnian, Catalan, Chichewa, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Esperanto, Greenlandic, Hungarian, Kashubian, Kurdish (Kurmanji), Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Maori, Polish, Saami (Inari), Saami (North), Serbian (latin), Slovak(ian), Slovene, Sorbian (Lower), Sorbian (Upper), Turkish and Turkmen. And they of course contain all the usual "western" glyphs supporting: Albanian, Basque, Breton, Chamorro, Danish, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Frisian, Galican, German, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish (Gaelic), Italian, Northern Sotho, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romance, Sami (Lule), Sami (South), Scots (Gaelic), Spanish, Swedish, Tswana, Walloon and Yapese.

Unlike the modest fonts in your menu content with discreetly imparting information, Carnival is conspicuous by design. Deliberately engineered to attract eyeballs, the typeface’s unmistakable silhouette produces a dramatic visual texture that stands out in print, on screen, or in any environment where your message demands to be noticed. The steady yet vibrant rhythm created by its letterforms also makes Carnival ideal for fashioning alphabet patterns and graphic devices. Flaunting a lean slender body anchored by stout stroke endings, Carnival turns conventional typographic thinking on its head by inverting the relative thickness of its stems and serifs. This reverse-contrast approach stretches all the way back to the roots of modern advertising, when similar types became the favorite for posters, packaging, and loads of consumer products during the 1800s. The striking style prevailed well into the next century, as Harold Horman, co-founder of New York City-based Photo-Lettering. Inc., modernized a version for the company’s popular film-typesetting service in the early 1940s. Digitized and expanded by Dan Reynolds in 2013, Carnival had previously been used exclusively for House Industries projects. Now you can get in on the action, and use this stunning slice of type history anytime you want your work to turn heads. SUGGESTED USES Carnival’s unique character commands attention, making it the perfect voice for promotional pieces, editorial design, labels, packaging, posters, and any other application that needs to strike the right tone. Like all good subversives, House Industries hides in plain sight while amplifying the look, feel and style of the world’s most interesting brands, products and people. Based in Delaware, visually influencing the world.

Cairoli was originally cast by Italian foundry Nebiolo in 1928, as a license of a design by Wagner & Schmidt, known as Neue moderne Grotesk. Its solid grotesque design (later developed as Aurora by Weber and Akzidenz-Grotesk by Haas) was extremely successful: it anticipated the versatility of sans serif superfamilies thanks to its range of weights and widths, while still retaining some eccentricities from end-of the century lead and wood type. In 2020 the Italiantype team directed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini and Mario De Libero decided to produce a revival of Cairoli, extending the original weight and width range and developing both a faithful Classic version and a Now variant. The Cairoli Classic family keeps the original low x-height range, very display-oriented, and normalizes the design while emphasizing the original peculiarities like the hook cuts in curved letters, the high-waisted uppercase R and the squared ovals of the letterforms. Cairoli Now is developed with an higher x-height, more suited for text and digital use, and adds to the original design deeper ink-traps and round punctuation, while slightly correcting the curves for a more contemporary look. Born as an exercise in subtlety and love for lost letterforms, Cairoli stands, like its lead ancestor from a century ago, at the crossroads between artsy craftsmanship and industrial needs. Its deviations from the norm are small enough to give it personality without affecting readability, and the expanded weight and width range make it into a workhorse superfamily with open type features (alternates, stylistic sets, positional numbers) and coverage of over two hundred languages using the latin extended alphabet.

Hermann is one of our most readable typefaces so far. Since last year, the W Design team had been examining closely the possibility of developing a text font. Thus, we dug into concepts within some of our favorite novels, such as The Steppenwolf and Brave New World, written by Hermann Hesse and Aldous Huxley respectively. Ideas like duality, surrealism, and wildness mainly appeared. With these concepts in mind, we analyzed carefully the typefaces used in both Hesse’s and Huxley’s creations; Sabon and Garamond showed up catching our attention and, of course, awakening our admiration. Consequently, the challenge was to combine the key features of these fonts with the concepts already identified. At first, we made a text font which was suitable to compose long texts. However, we realized that we needed to refine some characteristics to convey all the ideas. A full set of capital discretionary ligatures was designed, which convert Hermann in a display font when is required. We also designed swashes (from A-Z) and final forms (in letters h, k, m, n, r and x in romans, and in letters a, d, e, h, i, l, m, n, r, t, u, x and z in italics), conveying more dynamism and versatility when it comes to composing visually. Hermann was designed not only to be accurate in terms of legibility but also to be wild and bold. That is why we took a big leap and designed from the beginning a font that is inspired by the world of 20th-century novels, using the name of one of its greatest exponents, Hermann Hesse.

Are you looking for an appropriate typeface for coffee shops concept? We want to introduce Pistacho, the new type family of Estudio Calderon that contains 18 fonts to design great illustrations and to be applied, especially, in coffee shops, bakeries, ice-cream shops, candy stores, pastry shops, fruit shops and all those places where food is the center. Pistacho was designed by hand using pencils and markers that let us get a handcrafted and rough texture. Below, a brief description of each style: Display: A fresh and modern type, perfect to be used in coffee shops outdoor signs. The logotype of “Central Perk”, the coffee shop of the tv show “Friends” was our inspiration to develop this beautiful font that contains 317 characters and three variables: Display 1, Display 2 and Display 3, each one has specific characteristics that will be an excellent resource for your designs. Sans: Style that contains 7 fonts that can be mixed to get interesting finishes in your designs, each variable has 363 characters with standard ligatures and stylistic alternatives. You can find this styles as: Sans 1, Sans 2, Sans 3, Sans 4, Sans 5, Sans 6 and Sans 7. Good news, you can get Sans 5 DEMO for free. Script: Script 1 and Script 2, two monolineal fonts with a generous spacing that provides contrast and movement, being a suitable complement for the rest of the types of Pistacho family. Serif: Font with a lot of style and personality, inspired in the interlock alphabets shown in «Photo-Lettering´s One Line Manual of Style». Serif 1, Serif 2, Serif 3 and Serif 4 contain a great number of ligatures that generate nice compositions by combining them. One of the characteristics of this style is the combination of upper case and lower case giving as a result a different touch in each design. Soft: Humanist type with a rustic texture and geometric forms ideal for long texts and small sizes. Dingbats: We have designed a package of 244 graphics, illustrations and ornaments that are the perfect complement to combine with each font of this family. Get Pistacho type family, enjoy using it… and do not forget your cup of coffee.

Mencap When most of us go about everyday tasks, we take for granted the reading that’s involved, on instructions, labels and so on. For people with learning disabilities, reading is made much harder by certain fonts. FS Me is designed specifically to improve legibility for people with learning disabilities. The font was researched and developed with – and endorsed by – Mencap, the UK’s leading charity and voice for those with learning disabilities. Mencap receive a donation for each font license purchased. Every letter of FS Me was tested for its appeal and readability with a range of learning disability groups across the UK. Inclusive Fontsmith were determined to design a font that was accessible to those with learning disabilities without standing out as such – one that was inclusive of all readers. It should comply with accessibility guidelines and work best at 12pt, but still have a character of its own that was warm and approachable. “So much accessible design is done separately to the main body of brand work,” says Jason Smith. “We wanted to make a typeface that covered both brand tone and neutrality, and that could be used legitimately as a brand font as well as in accessible design.” Me, you, everyone FS Me is about design that doesn’t patronise. People with learning disabilities are often treated as inferior by childlike design. FS Me is designed for adults, not children – a beautifully-designed font for everyone. Its features include very subtle distinguishing elements of each letter to aid the reading and comprehension of texts, and tails, ascenders and descenders that have been extended for extra clarity. What the people said... Here is a sample of comments from the extensive research groups that helped to shape the letterforms of FS Me: “I want something round, clear and friendly.” “We like movement in the letters but don’t want anything childish.” “The ‘b’ and ‘d’ need to be different as they can be confused.” “I prefer the handwriting-style ‘a’.” “It’s important to have an accessible ‘a’ and ‘g’. Teachers sometimes complain that learners cannot read or understand the inaccessible ‘a’ and ‘g’.”

Mencap When most of us go about everyday tasks, we take for granted the reading that’s involved, on instructions, labels and so on. For people with learning disabilities, reading is made much harder by certain fonts. FS Me is designed specifically to improve legibility for people with learning disabilities. The font was researched and developed with – and endorsed by – Mencap, the UK’s leading charity and voice for those with learning disabilities. Mencap receive a donation for each font license purchased. Every letter of FS Me was tested for its appeal and readability with a range of learning disability groups across the UK. Inclusive Fontsmith were determined to design a font that was accessible to those with learning disabilities without standing out as such – one that was inclusive of all readers. It should comply with accessibility guidelines and work best at 12pt, but still have a character of its own that was warm and approachable. “So much accessible design is done separately to the main body of brand work,” says Jason Smith. “We wanted to make a typeface that covered both brand tone and neutrality, and that could be used legitimately as a brand font as well as in accessible design.” Me, you, everyone FS Me is about design that doesn’t patronise. People with learning disabilities are often treated as inferior by childlike design. FS Me is designed for adults, not children – a beautifully-designed font for everyone. Its features include very subtle distinguishing elements of each letter to aid the reading and comprehension of texts, and tails, ascenders and descenders that have been extended for extra clarity. What the people said... Here is a sample of comments from the extensive research groups that helped to shape the letterforms of FS Me: “I want something round, clear and friendly.” “We like movement in the letters but don’t want anything childish.” “The ‘b’ and ‘d’ need to be different as they can be confused.” “I prefer the handwriting-style ‘a’.” “It’s important to have an accessible ‘a’ and ‘g’. Teachers sometimes complain that learners cannot read or understand the inaccessible ‘a’ and ‘g’.”