Pietro Aretino (1492 – 1556) Was an Italian author, playwright, poet, satirist and blackmailer, who wielded influence on contemporary art and politics. The most vigorous and versatile vernacular writer of the 16th century He was a very versatile writer, famous for his Lascivious Sonnets – which caused great scandal at the time – but also for his satirical verses, addressed to all the powerful people in Italy, without forgetting the many plays that he wrote for the theatre. Part of the charm of his letters is that through them you may know the whole of Venetian society from the top to the bottom. The little-known church of San Luca in Venice (in St Mark's district) has been a place of pilgrimage for centuries for people who are decidedly not devout: journalists, writers, free thinkers. In 1556 Pietro Aretino, a unique character of the Italian and Venetian Renaissance period was buried there. Such strong of personality, has contributed to generate the powerful wind of change that emerged from the italian renaissance. We have inspired on that talent searching for a new sight the famous Venetian typefaces. Probably looking for more vigour and contemporary digital style. This typeface is slightly condensed, lighter and has more contrast between the thick and thin letter-strokes, it has concave bracketed serif. Their ascender and descenders strokes are very shorts. Aretino family is completed by four weigh: Regular, SemiBold, Bold and ExtraBold, while Italics has three weighs. These fonts came with a full OpenType features and CE languages.

Bex Script is a riff on traditional French script forms: the Bâtarde, the Ronde, and the Coulée. It has two versions: First, there’s La Belle, a straightforward, lovely interpretation of the script form, suitable for things like invitations, poetry and branding. La Belle’s evil twin is La Bête, a more whimsical (and considerably more hairy) version, great for anything that requires an elegant-but-beastly feel. Bex is surprisingly versatile! With three optional capital forms (Swash, Caps, and Small Caps) all taller than the x-height, Bex has a variety of voices. A full small cap set and a full set of Swash Caps, plus a large complement of alternates, initial forms, terminal forms, and ligatures makes it customizable and… well, FANCY! Additionally, both versions of Bex Script have a set of ten ornament glyphs. La Belle has a combination of fleurons on a culinary theme and symbols of France. La Bête has ten pseudoheraldic beasts that would feel at home at the top center of any whimsical letterhead. NOTE: A few years ago in Paris, I was lucky enough to stop at the Librairie Paul Jammes in St Germain-des-Prés, where I bought a turn-of-the-19th-century signature from a Type Specimen of the printer Joseph Gaspard Gillé. The irregularity of his script types — particularly the ones at smaller sizes, like the Cicéro — was very intriguing. They seemed to blend the Ronde with some elements of the Bâtarde and Coulée. And they, along with the work of French master penman Louis Rossignol, gave Bex Script its initial form.

Lyra is an Italian Renaissance script that might have developed if metal type had not broken the evolution of broad pen calligraphy. It lies in the area between the humanist bookhand and the chancery cursive, combining the fullness and articulation of the Roman letters with a moderate italic slant and condensation. A steep pen-angle allows use of a broader pen relative to the x-height, giving the letters more contrast with light verticals and heavy curves. Lyra embodies the Renaissance spirit of refining technical advances of the late middle ages with reintroduction of ancient classical principles. Based on the moving penstroke with constantly changing pen-angle, it brings the vitality of handwriting to the ordered legibility of type. Lyra is a formal italic, too slow for copying books. By eliminating the element of speed, digital technology opens up a new level of calligraphy, bringing it into the sphere of typography as would naturally have happened if metalworkers had not controlled the process. If classical Western traditions are respected, digital calligraphy has the potential to recapture the work of the past and restart its stalled evolution. There is of course no substitute for the charm of actual writing, with each letter made for its space; but the tradeoff is for the formal harmony of classical calligraphy as every curve resonates in tune with every other. This three-weight font family marks Philip Bouwsma's much-requested return from a three year hiatus. It also reminds us of his solid vision in regards to how calligraphy, typography and technology can interact to produce digital beauty and vesatility. Each of the three Lyra fonts contains almost three character sets in a single file. Aside from the usual wealth of alternates normally built into Bouwsma's work, Lyra offers two unique features for the user who appreciates the availability of handy solutions to subtle design space issues: At least three (and as many as six) length variations on ascending and descending forms, and 65 snap-on swashes which can be attached to either end of the majuscules or minuscules. The series also offers 24 dividers and ornaments built into each weight, and a stand-alone font containing 90 stars/snowflakes/flowers, symmetric contstructs for building frames or separators, masking, watermarking, or just good old psychedelia.

The Typorium presents a new optimized and enriched version of ITC Ellipse which first appeared in 1996 in the International Typeface Corporation typeface library. ITC Ellipse Neo design has been lightly modified. Three weights have been added (light, Medium, Extra Bold, including Italics) to the original Regular and Bold styles. ITC Ellipse Neo is both modern and classic. Modern in the unusual shape based on the geometric ellipse form. And classic in the structure of some letters like the lower cases c, e, g, o, s. These letters alone could come from a traditional typeface, but they fit perfectly with the atypical rest of the alphabet giving it a present-day and traditional mix. Furthermore, the ellipse shape fits naturally in the italic styles, giving the font an organic and fluid feeling. ITC Ellipse Neo offers OpenType features such as alternate characters for upper and lower case, and an extended accented character set to support many languages. Five weights have been created for each style to offer a wide range of graphic possibilities in a tidy digital footprint. Designer: Jean-Renaud Cuaz Publisher: Typorium MyFonts debut: December 15, 2020 Le Typorium présente une nouvelle version optimisée et enrichie d'ITC Ellipse qui est apparue pour la première fois en 1996 dans la bibliothèque de caractères de l'International Typeface Corporation. Le design de ITC Ellipse Neo a été légèrement modifié. Trois graisses ont été ajoutées (léger, moyen, extra gras, y compris les italiques) aux styles originaux Regular et Bold. ITC Ellipse Neo est à la fois moderne et classique. Moderne dans le dessin inhabituel basé sur la forme géométrique de l’ellipse. Et classique dans la structure de certaines lettres comme les minuscules c, e, g, o, s. Ces lettres pourraient provenir d'une police de caractères traditionnelle, mais elles s'intègrent parfaitement avec le reste de l'alphabet plus insolite en lui donnant un mélange de modernité et de tradition. De plus, la forme de l'ellipse s'intègre naturellement dans les styles italiques, donnant à la police une sensation organique et fluide. ITC Ellipse Neo offre des fonctionnalités OpenType telles que des caractères alternatifs pour les capitales et les bas de casse, et un jeu de caractères accentués étendu pour prendre en charge de nombreuses langues. Cinq graisses ont été créés pour chaque style afin d'offrir un large éventail de possibilités graphiques pour une empreinte numérique rigoureuse.

The Bunken Tech Sans superfamily: A reminiscence of constructed fonts of the modern age designed with considerably cleaner forms. •See other members of the Superfamily: Bunken Tech Sans •For further details, view the Specimen PDF. Bunken Tech Sans Wide follows in the best tradition of the straight-lined and somewhat angular structures of its predecessors while offering a much more open and mild design. The shapes of the letters are therefore reduced to the most essential elements: The spurs on a, b, n and other lower case letters occur just as little as decorative or style details, the lightly rounded inside edges are more pleasing to the eye than certain historic role models and make for a harmonic, flowing style. Use In particular Bunken Tech Sans Wide stands out as an easy, distinctive headline font with its straight-lined, technical design. Open counters and large x-height make it equally suited for use in shorter texts. It is also perfectly complemented by Bunken Sans or Bunken Slab in longer texts (available soon). Features Available in 16 styles with widths ranging from Light to Heavy with associated Italics. All of the styles are very extensive: Support for at least 58 languages, Small Capitals, 9 number sets (e.g. Lining, Oldstyle, Tabular and Small Cap Figures), ligatures, alternate characters, numerous Opentype functions, and lots of other small features that make it more pleasant to work with the font on a daily basis as well as fulfilling typographic desires. Each style contains more than 870 characters! Each style is available in a professional (Pro) standard (Std) and Small Caps (SC) edition with a different range of functions. (Language support, OpenType features and number of glyphs). Details can be found on the respective pages. Bunken Tech Sans Wide is part of the Bunken Tech superfamily and is available in Condensed, Normal and Wide. Also of interest: The slab serif variation Bunken Tech Slab Features in Detail: 16 Weights: -Light -Book -Medium -SemiBold -Bold -ExtraBold -UltraBold -Heavy and corresponding Italics 3 Widths: -Condensed -Normal -Wide Alternate Characters: A, E, F, L, S, e, f, t, s, y, etc. Small Capitals 5 Sets of Figures: -Lining Figures -Old Style Figures -Tabfigures -Old Style Tabfigures -Small Cap Figures Automatic Ordinals Automatic Fractions Extended Language Support and more...

From today's point of view Katarine has a rather unusual origin. Initially an all-caps display face, what was to become the Medium weight of the family was augmented with a lower case, then the character set was completed by adding all the missing glyphs. The next step was the creation of the Light and the Bold weights with matching Italics. This working method compromised the relationships between the characters across the different weights After some consideration the decision was made to start over and draw the complete family from scratch. This time the "conventional" process was followed — first the Light and Bold weights were designed. Those extremes were used to interpolate the Regular, Medium and Semibold weights. When compared to the original, the glyphs of the new fonts are slightly wider. The construction of the letters is sturdy, with an x-height that varies from the heaviest to the lightest weights. The relationship of the stem weight between the horizontal and vertical strokes is carefully balanced. Characters are open and firm; the italics have room to breathe. The original fonts included two sets of small caps — Small Caps and Petite Caps. However neither set were suited for emphasis, with the Small Caps being too tall and the Petite Caps too short. We decided to replace them both with one set of traditional small caps, slightly taller than the x-height, perfectly suited for emphasis in text usage. The original version of Katarine was partly incorporated into the new OpenType versions. Thus most of the original arrows, frames and boxes can be found in the new Katarine. Each individual weight now contains 830 glyphs, nine sets of numerals, small caps, numerous ligatures and fractions. An additional font named Numbers contains numerals in circles and squares, and is now augmented with accented caps and a number of terminal alternatives, which can easily be accessed through stylistic sets. We also added two extra variants, Experts Regular and Experts Black (in inverted form). Katarine Std preserves the solid construction and excellent legibility of the original family, but has now become a fully featured OpenType typeface. Katarine is suited for a broad range of applications, from simple layouts to intricate corporate systems. It is the typeface of choice where the cold, austere character of modern sans serifs are inappropriate, yet simple shapes and good legibility are required.

The purpose of the original DIN 1451 standard was to lay down a style of lettering which is timeless and easily legible. Unfortunately, these early letters lacked elegance and were not properly designed for typographic applications. Ever since its first publication in the 1930’s, several type foundries adopted the original designs for digital photocomposition. By early 2000, it became apparent that the existing DIN-based fonts did not fulfil the ever-increasing demand for a diverse set of weights and additional support for non-Latin languages. Parachute® was set out to fill this gap by introducing the PF DIN series which has become ever since the most comprehensive and sophisticated set of DIN typefaces. It was based on the original standards but was specifically designed to fit typographic requirements. Its letterforms divert from the stiff geometric structure of the original and introduce instead elements which are familiar, softer and easier to read. The first set of fonts was completed in 2002 as a group of 3 families which included condensed and compressed versions. With its vast array of weights, the extended language support, but most of all its meticulous and elaborate design, it has proved itself valuable to numerous design agencies around the world. Ever since its first release, it has been used in diverse editorials, packaging, branding and advertising campaigns as well as a great number of websites. It was quoted by Publish magazine as being “an overkill series for complex corporate identity projects”. The whole PF DIN Text type system (with normal, condensed and compressed styles) includes 45 weights from Hairline to Extra Black including true-italics. Additionally, every font in the Pro series is powered by 270 very useful symbols for packaging, environmental graphics, signage, transportation, computing, fabric care. There are 2 versions to choose from: The PRO version is the most powerful. All weights support Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Central/Eastern European, Romanian, Baltic and Turkish, with 20 advanced opentype features including small caps. The standard STD version is more economic. All weights support Latin, Central/Eastern European, Romanian, Baltic and Turkish, with 18 advanced opentype features including small caps. In 2010 Parachute® released 4 new families DIN Monospace, DIN Stencil, DIN Text Arabic and DIN Text Universal. All these are complemented by the popular DIN Display version. Altogether the Parachute DIN series is a set of 8 superfamilies with a total of 96 weights.

“A picture is worth a thousand words” and here, that’s more than true. Take a look at Erotica’s Booklet; Erotica’s Poster Design and Erotica’s User’s Guide before reading below. THE STYLES The difference between Pro and Std styles is the quantity of glyphs. Therefore, Pro styles include all the decorative alternates and ligatures while Std styles are a reduced version of Pro ones. Big and Small styles were thought for better printing results. While Big is recommended to be printed in big sizes, Small may be printed in tiny sizes and will still show its hairlines well. INTRODUCTION I have always wondered if the circle could ever be considered as an imperfect shape. Thousands of years have passed and we still consider circles as synonyms of infinite beauty. Some believe that there is something intrinsically “divine” that could be found in them. Sensuality is many times related to perfectly shaped strong curves, exuberant forms and a big contrasts. Erotica is a font created with this in mind. THE PROCESS This story begins one fine day of March in 2012. I was looking for something new. Something which would express the deep love I feel regarding calligraphy in a new way. At that time, I was practicing a lot of roundhand, testing and feeling different kinds of nibs; hearing the sometimes sharp, sometimes soft, sound of them sliding on the paper. This kind of calligraphy has some really strict rules: An even pattern of repetition is required, so you have to be absolutely aware of the pressure of the flexible pen; and of the distance between characters. Also, learning copperplate can be really useful to understand about proportion in letters and how a minimum change of it can drastically affect the look of the word and text. Many times I would forget about type-design and I would let myself go(1): Nothing like making the pen dance when adding some accolades above and below the written word. Once something is mastered, you are able to break some rules. At least, that’s my philosophy. (2) After some research, I found that the world was in need of a really sexy yet formal copperplate. (3) I started Erotica with the idea of taking some rules of this style to the extreme. Some characters were drawn with a pencil first because what I had in mind was impossible to be made with a pen. (4) Finding a graceful way to combine really thick thicks with really thin hairlines with satisfactory results demanded months of tough work: The embryo of Erotica was a lot more bolder than now and had a shorter x-height. Changing proportions of Erotica was crucial for its final look. The taller it became the sexier it looked. Like women again? The result is a font filled with tons of alternates which can make the user think he/she is the actual designer of the word/phrase due to the huge amount of possibilities when choosing glyphs. To make Erotica work well in small sizes too, I designed Erotica Small which can be printed in tiny sizes without any problems. For a more elegant purpose, I designed Erotica Inline, with exactly the same features you can find in the other styles. After finishing these styles, I needed a partner for Erotica. Inspired again in some old calligraphic books I found that Bickham used to accompany his wonderful scripts with some ornated roman caps. Erotica Capitals follows the essentials of those capitals and can be used with or without its alternates to accompany Erotica. In 2013, Erotica received a Certificate of Excellence in Type Design in the 59th TDC Type Directors Club Typeface Design Competition. Meet Erotica, beauty and elegance guaranteed. Notes (1) It is supossed that I'm a typographer rather than a calligrapher, but the truth is that I'm in the middle. Being a graphic designer makes me a little stubborn sometimes. But, I found that the more you don't think of type rules, the more graceful and lively pieces of calligraphy can be done. (2) “Know the forms well before you attempt to make them” used to say E. A. Lupfer, a master of this kind of script a century ago. And I would add “And once you know them, it’s time to fly...” (3) Some script fonts by my compatriots Sabrina Lopez, Ramiro Espinoza and Alejandro Paul deserve a mention here because of their undeniable beauty. The fact that many great copperplate fonts come from Argentina makes me feel really proud. Take a look at: Parfumerie, Medusa, Burgues, Poem and Bellisima. (4) Some calligraphers, graphic and type designer experimented in this field in the mid-to-late 20th century and made a really playful style out of it: Letters show a lot of personality and sometimes they seem drawn rather than written. I want to express my sincere admiration to the fantastic Herb Lubalin, and his friends Tony DiSpigna, Tom Carnase, and of course my fellow countryman Ricardo Rousselot. All of them, amazing.