The origin of the word Codswallop is uncertain, but it might have something to do with a 19th century English soft drink brewer named Hiram Codd. Codswallop is a beautiful hand drawn font. A little weird, a tad grotesque and a wee bit over the top, but fun and useful nonetheless.

A tessellation is a pattern in which a shape or tile fits together with copies of itself to fill the plane with no gaps or overlaps. One type of tessellation is formed with sides of center-point rotation, that is, one half of an edge is rotated 180 degrees to form the other half. If a square template is made with sides of identical center-point rotation, there are exactly four shapes that are possible. If these shapes or tiles are fit together not edge to edge but vertex to vertex, the result is a checkerboard-like pattern of tiles and voids. However, the voids have four edges formed by the four possible shapes that the tiles can have, so the voids are limited to the same four shapes that that make up the tiles. The FabFours have 22 tile families that allow a wide variety of fascinating patterns. They form one, two, three, and four tile tessellation. Eleven of the seventeen symmetry groups can be formed with these patterns. In each tile family two of the shapes have two possible orientations, one shape has four possible orientations, and one has eight, for a total of 16 tiles. Each font has two families, one on letters A-P the other on a-p. For some of the families there are also other tiles using the same edge but using triangular and hexagonal templates. To get proper results, the leading must be set equal to the point size of the font. I discovered these fabulous families and their decorative possibilities as I was working on a book about tessellations. I have not been able to find anyone else who has written about these families of four and their decorative possibilities when arranged vertex to vertex.

Talking about the numerous types that today bear the name of Giambattista Bodoni are a kind of tribute as much to his reputation as a printer as to his ability as designer and engraver. In fact, all of them tent to be more in the way or style of Bodoni than simply copy of his letterforms. Like many other type designers, we’ve been seduced also to develop our own point of view of his work, nowadays enriched by some features of OpenType format that allows a variety of combinations: standard ligatures, discretional ligatures, stylistic alternates and old styles figures. Whereas the Bodoni serif in the capitals was of the same weight as the thin stroke but joined with a very slight fillet (Bracket) and the lowercase serif were like his French rivals, the Didots, featured straight- edged serifs that were unbracketed. The ascenders and descenders of this new Bodoni are shorter, giving in this way, more space for enlarge x high. Specially designed for editorial design and advertising, can be used in magazines, annual reports and all kind of fine print materials or web pages. The beauty of his letterforms can enrich headlines; this font can also be used as body text for its good legibility and accurate kerning.