Multicolored Fonts Many years ago, when Xerox Corporation still had its own font department, I came to Los Angeles in 1985 to train the IKARUS program. One day Bill Kienzel, head of the Xerox font department at the time, said we should go to the Hollywood Hills together; he knew people there who were experimenting with multicolored fonts. After a little wandering through the winding streets of the many hills, we reached a somewhat overgrown, simple family house standing under trees. A group of very inspired designers were waiting for us there. They immediately showed us the works they created using photomechanical tricks. They were fascinating. The American colors and the whole look seemed noble and enchanting. The problem was that this process was very difficult to implement and required a lot of effort on individual letters. They dreamed of a colored font that could be used for normal typesetting. We thought back and forth about how to save the individually colored letters in a common font, but soon gave up because we didn't see a technical option. So this idea and the memory of the time in Hollywood lay dormant in the back of my mind for many years, until at the beginning of this year 2023 I received an order to produce an outline typeface and the story came back to me. Suddenly I knew how to solve the problem from back then: if only the areas that should have the same color in all letters were saved in their own separate fonts, they could be colored independently of each other and later placed on top of each other. I implemented this in the 5 fonts that are now available with the 3 variants “Outside”, “Middle” and “Inside”. Together with the background, 4 colors can be combined with each other. This method works in text programs such as Word or InDesign. In Photoshop or Illustrator, the individual surfaces can also be colored by converting them into paths if the additional “Complete” variants (which contain all 3 contours) are used. There is also a “Basic” variant that can be used to achieve special effects such as overlay, bleed, etc. The first 5 fonts in this series are all based on the principle of contouring. Anyone who claims that you don't need any special fonts because they can be created automatically from any font using common programs is wrong or is only telling only half the truth. Anyone who has ever dealt with this knows that many individual adjustments to the design are necessary after contouring. This has happened in the 5 fonts that are now available and have very different styles. The dream from back then has come true. The user can set any text, long or short, in multiple colors, freely design the color scheme and apply all the usual typographic settings. Volker Schnebel, November 2023

Tall, stately, and refined, with a showy contrast between thick and thin, a certain kind of titling Didone has become synonymous with fashion. Ermin Međedović’s latest type system amplifies the most theatrical aspects of this genre while bringing an uncommon flexibility of style and variation to any type palette — particularly those required for editorial design. Fino is a Rational (or Modern) display serif with sharp details. Its fairly Title proportions produce a regular beat of bold stems at frequent intervals. One can add an unexpected twist to this plot line by introducing the alternate ‘C, D, G, O, and Q’ (found in the uppercase); these replace the standard, Title oval shapes with big, full, show-stopping round ones. Other alternate forms, along with a grand ensemble cast of ligatures, lets the director continually flip the script. This stage is set in three acts: Fino, Fino, and Fino Stencil. Each of these offer six weights and italics, and each actor is comfortable speaking any Latin-based language, from standard Hollywood English to the many accents of Eastern Europe. Finally, every style comes in two optical sizes, with Title having the finest hairlines for the biggest parts. This lets you put Fino to work in a variety of productions, from short texts (24pt–48pt settings) to epic titles. The complete Fino family, along with our entire catalogue, has been optimised for today’s varied screen uses. All these talents let Fino perform a range of roles far broader than your typical Bodoni or Didot.

Tall, stately, and refined, with a showy contrast between thick and thin, a certain kind of titling Didone has become synonymous with fashion. Ermin Međedović’s latest type system amplifies the most theatrical aspects of this genre while bringing an uncommon flexibility of style and variation to any type palette — particularly those required for editorial design. Fino Sans is a Rational (or Modern) display serif with sharp details. Its fairly Title proportions produce a regular beat of bold stems at frequent intervals. One can add an unexpected twist to this plot line by introducing the alternate ‘C, D, G, O, and Q’ (found in the uppercase); these replace the standard, Title oval shapes with big, full, show-stopping round ones. Other alternate forms, along with a grand ensemble cast of ligatures, lets the director continually flip the script. This stage is set in three acts: Fino Sans, Fino Sans, and Fino Sans Stencil. Each of these offer six weights and italics, and each actor is comfortable speaking any Latin-based language, from standard Hollywood English to the many accents of Eastern Europe. Finally, every style comes in two optical sizes, with Title having the finest hairlines for the biggest parts. This lets you put Fino Sans to work in a variety of productions, from short texts (24pt–48pt settings) to epic titles. The complete Fino Sans family, along with our entire catalogue, has been optimised for today’s varied screen uses. All these talents let Fino Sans perform a range of roles far broader than your typical Bodoni or Didot.

Tall, stately, and refined, with a showy contrast between thick and thin, a certain kind of titling Didone has become synonymous with fashion. Ermin Međedović’s latest type system amplifies the most theatrical aspects of this genre while bringing an uncommon flexibility of style and variation to any type palette — particularly those required for editorial design. Fino Stencil is a Rational (or Modern) display serif with sharp details. Its fairly Title proportions produce a regular beat of bold stems at frequent intervals. One can add an unexpected twist to this plot line by introducing the alternate ‘C, D, G, O, and Q’ (found in the uppercase); these replace the standard, Title oval shapes with big, full, show-stopping round ones. Other alternate forms, along with a grand ensemble cast of ligatures, lets the director continually flip the script. This stage is set in three acts: Fino Stencil, Fino Stencil, and Fino Stencil Stencil. Each of these offer six weights and italics, and each actor is comfortable speaking any Latin-based language, from standard Hollywood English to the many accents of Eastern Europe. Finally, every style comes in two optical sizes, with Title having the finest hairlines for the biggest parts. This lets you put Fino Stencil to work in a variety of productions, from short texts (24pt–48pt settings) to epic titles. The complete Fino Stencil family, along with our entire catalogue, has been optimized for today’s varied screen uses. All these talents let Fino Stencil perform a range of roles far broader than your typical Bodoni or Didot.

DT Decopolis Hotel is a sharply stylised Sans Serif Art Deco font, crafted with a wide oval, dissected and contrasted against precision straight edges and pixel sharp corners. The Capitals have a raised centre line, aligning with the tall lowercase height. A nostalgic looking Art Deco font referencing the 1920's to 1940's during the Golden age of Hollywood, Art Moderne and the rise of luxury items from 100 years ago. Totally geometric with great variations in glyph widths designed to attract attention and create Headlines. DT Decopolis Hotel is a display font with clean simple lines, intended to create a sleek elegance that displays the sophistication of a by-gone era. With both upper and lower-case, this font is Great for Logotypes, Headlines, Strap-lines and smaller descriptive text to give that authentic Art Deco look and feel. Evoking the Art Deco Era of the Great Gatsby, glamorous Hotels and Movie Theatres of the period. Packed with over 500 glyphs, you will enjoy the uniqueness of this typeface! Inspired by 1920's Art Deco, Artisual Deco is a 2020's celebration dedicated to the hundred-year-old history of geometric design. This retro typeface will be the perfect fit for your logo designs or graphic project. DT Decopolis Hotel is a perfect choice for designs with a luxurious but minimalist look and feel. Useful in headlines, logos or product packaging it will match perfectly against sloped script fonts. The typeface works perfectly in both All-Caps or full Upper and lower case. Use with Contextual/Standard Ligatures turned on when possible. to allow the letters to match their neighbours. This will also enable larger Caps for the first letter of a new sentence.

In the history of 20th century graphic arts, the evolution of the informal sans serif has been a uniquely American phenomenon. The ongoing saga of this (still as popular as ever) sub-genre dates back to the maturity of the Industrial Age and early Hollywood film titling, runs through the prosperous times of interwar print publications, sees mass flourishing during the various media propagations of the film type era, and solidifies itself as arguably the most common design element in the latter years of the century. Fun, bouncy, playful, and highly exciting, the casual sans serif is now all over game packaging, film and animation titles, book covers, food boxes, concert posters, and pretty much everywhere design aims to induce excitement about a product or an event. The casual sans is the natural high pill of typesetting. We figured it was high time for the casual sans to adapt to 21st century technology, gain more versatility, and become as much fun to use as the emotions it triggers. So we’re quite excited to issue Bananas, a fun sans serif family in 6 weights and 3 widths that can be used anywhere your designer’s imagination can take you. Rather than being based on a single design, Bananas was sourced from multiple American film era faces, all from 1950s and 1960s, when the casual sans genre was at its popular peak. Headliners’ Catalina and its very similar cousin, Letter Graphics’ Carmel, served as initial study points. Then a few Dave West designs informed the design development and weighting process, before narrow and wide takes were sketched out and included in the family. The entire development process happened in a highly precise interpolative environment. All Bananas fonts come with a full glyph complement supporting the majority of Latin languages, as well as five sets of figures, automatic fractions, quite a few ligatures, biform/unicase shapes and other stylistic alternates.

Joachim Müller-Lancé's Uppercut is a rather sporting fellow, originally developed for the Krav Maga training center of San Francisco (Krav Maga is a simple and efficient self-defense system that has become equally popular in Hollywood and with law enforcement). Joachim has spent several years training, hitting things and people whenever he needs a break from kerning. Uppercut can be seen on the school's t-shirts and other articles. Despite bearing the same moniker as an upwards punch to the chin, the name actually fell together quite naturally as Uppercut is an all uppercase typeface, and the word "cut" is also historically used to describe a type style in hot metal type. For this slanted look, "Angle" felt just right (with thanks to Mia McHatton). The design idea sprang from pencil sketches for the center's new identity. Uppercut's shapes are not calligraphic or handwritten, more like lettering seen in comics or sports logos. Its brush movements are imaginary, not too literally brushy. During development, details were simplified and reduced until a bit of a cut-paper feel emerged, but more fluid like writing. The shapes are economical and efficient; simplicity makes the font versatile, holding up in small as well as big sizes. Uppercut is decidedly analog, muscular but not bulky, with the fluid but determined movements of a boxer or martial artist - not theatrical but powerful, fast, confident and dynamic. Well... it has punch. In the proportions, there is emphasis on a strong upper edge "keeping its guard up", while several stems protrude downward, giving the impression of leaping or being "light on the feet". Use Uppercut to pick up the pace, add snap, verve and drive - on movie posters for action and adventure, to advertise your dojo, rumble or prizefight, racing team or tuning shop, or invite friends to your barbecue with old time rock'n'roll and homemade hot pepper sauce.

An inline adaptation of a distinctive slab serif, Cesium is an unusually responsive display face that maintains its high energy across a range of different moods. The Cesium typeface was designed by Jonathan Hoefler in 2020. An energetic inline adaptation of Hoefler’s broad-shouldered Vitesse Black typeface (2000), Cesium is named for the fifty-fifth member of the periodic table of the elements, a volatile liquid metal that presents as a scintillating quicksilver. From the desk of the designer, Jonathan Hoefler: I always felt that our Vitesse typeface, an unusual species of slab serif, would take well to an inline. Vitesse is based not on the circle or the ellipse, but on a less familiar shape that has no common name, a variation on the ‘stadium’ that has two opposing flat edges, and two gently rounded sides. In place of sharp corners, Vitesse uses a continuously flowing stroke to manage the transition between upright and diagonal lines, most apparent on letters like M and N. A year of making this gesture with my wrist, both when drawing letterforms and miming their intentions during design critiques, left me thinking about a reduced version of the typeface, in which letters would be defined not by inside and outside contours, but by a single, fluid raceway. Like most straightforward ideas, this one proved challenging to execute, but its puzzles were immensely satisfying to solve. Adding an inline to a typeface is the quickest way to reveal its secrets. All the furtive adjustments in weight and size that a type designer makes — relieving congestion by thinning the center arm of a bold E, or lightening the intersecting strokes of a W — are instantly exposed with the addition of a centerline. Adapting an existing alphabet to accommodate this inline called for renovating every single character (down to the capital I, the period, and even the space), in some cases making small adjustments to reallocate weight, at other times redesigning whole parts of the character set. The longer we worked on the typeface, the more we discovered opportunities to turn these constraints into advantages, solving stubbornly complex characters like € and § by redefining how an inline should behave, and using these new patterns to reshape the rest of the alphabet. The New Typeface The outcome is a typeface we’re calling Cesium. It shares many of Vitesse’s qualities, its heartbeat an energetic thrum of motorsports and industry, and it will doubtless be welcome in both hardware stores and Hollywood. But we’ve been surprised by Cesium’s more reflective moods, its ability to be alert and softspoken at the same time. Much in the way that vibrant colors can animate a typeface, we’ve found that Cesium’s sensitivity to spacing most effectively changes its voice. Tighter leading and tracking turns up the heat, heightening Cesium’s sporty, high-tech associations, but with the addition of letterspacing it achieves an almost literary repose. This range of voices recommends Cesium not only to logos, book covers, and title sequences, but to projects that regularly must adjust their volume, such as identities, packaging, and editorial design. Read more about how to use Cesium. About the Name Cesium is a chemical element, one of only five metals that’s liquid at room temperature. Resembling quicksilver, cesium is typically stored in a glass ampule, where the tension between a sturdy outer vessel and its volatile contents is scintillating. The Cesium typeface hopes to capture this quality, its bright and insistent inline restrained by a strong and sinuous container. Cesium is one of only three H&Co typefaces whose name comes from the periodic table, a distinction it shares with Mercury and Tungsten. At a time when I considered a more sci-fi name for the typeface, I learned that these three elements have an unusual connection: they’re used together in the propulsion system of nasa’s Deep Space 1, the first interplanetary spacecraft powered by an ion drive. I found the association compelling, and adopted the name at once, with the hope that designers might employ the typeface in the same spirit of discovery, optimism, and invention. —JH Featured in: Best Fonts for Logos