I have been to Japan many times, but I have to admit that I have not (yet) been to Odaiba, so this font is a reminder that I should go there one day. Odaiba is a large artificial Island in the bay of Tokyo. It is a popular shopping and sightseeing destination and its sights include a copy of the Statue of Liberty and a mega-sized Gundam Robot. Odaiba Script is a handwritten font. I used a Sharpie pen on paper, so it is nice and thick. It comes with double letter ligatures and all diacritics.

Bring some sass to your signage! Alasassy is a font inspired from Sharpie pen drawings, featuring ink ball terminals. The lowercase letters are a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters that share the same cap height and baseline. There are several alternate characters with a mix of high and low crossbars as well as crossbar overhang options and language support for each. This display font will bring some zest to your logo, signage, packaging design or large titles on book covers or advertising. It is a great combination of an organic, hand drawn feel but still clean and crisp enough to look professional.

Blacketor came about from hand lettering I had done for my own personal use several years ago. It remained unfinished until now. I was going for a more traditional serif font but in the process of play various versions came about while playing with the serifs, in an attempt to be slightly different. Many versions fell to the wayside as I learned more about what didn’t work than what did. What came about was a clean font with large open counters and short ascenders for an easy read. All caps works well for a bold but not shouty statement. A good font for Headlines and callouts as well as logotypes.

Ford's Folly is a lively yet sophisticated handwriting font designed by Ascender's Jim Ford. It captures the look and spirit of the designer's handwriting using a using a Sharpie™ Extra Fine felt pen. This casual script font evokes an energetic feeling, and has very legible letterforms without quirky distractions. Jim Ford took his hand global by creating a massive multilingual character set. The font features the WGL Pan-European character set (Eastern Europe, Cyrillic, Greek and Turkish) and advanced typographic features for use with OpenType-savvy applications. The font is a fun and attractive handwriting font that is great for greeting cards, menus, advertisements, scrapbooking and many other projects that can benefit a personal appearance.

Have you ever used a handwritten font on your design project? Have you ever felt bored or dissatisfied with its glyphs style that looks stiff and doesn't flow even doesn't really characterize the peculiarities of a handwritten font? Or fonts that don't have alternative glyphs so they look monotonous in a word or even sentence. And in the end, it makes your projects so far from your expectations, even your clients. It's so frustrating, isn't it? Just wake up from your dissatisfaction and this is your time to make a good choice for your design project. So, we have a solution to fix it. We introduce 'Stylish Classy' just for you. This is a font that really characterizes from the handwritten style. This font is crafted carefully in every its single scratch, created to look as close to a natural handwritten script so that it can create the perfect combination on each glyph. When we make this font, we really want to create a touch that is so free-flowing that it gives a natural impression on its use later. For example, if you want letter 's' that has a flow sketch with letter 't', you can find it in 'st' ligature glyph. So if you really want a so natural and flowing touch in your project, Stylish Classy Font gives you 210 Natural Ligatures ( combining of two or more letters in a glyph ), Two Alternates, and Slant Version. Stylish Classy is a fashionable handwritten script font and obviously it's so Stylish and Classy :) Stylish Classy Font offers beautiful typographic harmony for your design projects diversity e.g. logos & branding, wedding designs, social media posts, advertisements, product designs, quotes, watermark, photography, poster design, magazine, stationery, or simply as a stylish text overlay to any background image. - Included Languages support: Afrikaans, Albanian, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, German, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Norwegian, Malay, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Zulu. - All Natural Ligatures (210 Glyphs): Bh Cl Cr Cs Ct Cy Hy Jh Ji Kh Kl Lo My Mrs Mr Mt Si Sl Sp Sp St St1 St2 St3 Ul1 Un1 Ut1 Ul Un Ut Wh Yo aa ab ab1 ab2 ak1 all ant app arr art ask ast at at2 at3 at4 att af ah aj ak ak1 al al1 an ap ap ar av bb1 bb cc ch ck co ct dd ever ee1 ee2 ent er1 err ett ee ek el en er es et ff1 ff2 ful ff fi gg1 gh gh2 ght gn1 gf gg gh gi gl gn hh ight ill1 ill2 it's itt1 if1 ill ion ism it1 it2 ith itt ity if ii il it jj1 jj kk ll1 ll2 la lh ll most nt oll on2 on1 op1 ops or1 orr oth ous of oh ok ol om on oo op or ot ow ox oz ph pp pt rk1 rta rk rr rt sl1 sl2 sl3 ss1 ss2 st1 st2 st3 st4 st5 st sh si sl sp ss st the tt1 tt2 th to tt tv ty ull ure ut1 ut2 ut3 us ut ve vs wh wt yl1 yl2 yl3 you yr yr2 yl yn yr mm1 mm2 mm3 mm ms nn1 nn -Swash on pictures are not included

Faddy is always fresh, smiling, slightly crazed, sometimes angry, often fuzzy, and can also be very funny. You can write with Faddy in multiple languages. Faddy contains 3 different styles - Regular, Circle & Shaggy. Each style includes more than 500 glyphs, as well as the necessary OpenType features: Superscript, Subscript, Tabular Figures, Arrows, Matching currency symbols, and fractions. Faddy also has a lot of fun stylistic sets, variants of letters that can give him a different mood and look.

Get the handwritten, labeled look you love with MIX LABEL – the perfect font for creating clean, thick designs. Inspired by the look of school supplies labeled with a Sharpie marker, this font is ideal for replicating the handwritten style of labels and addresses on mailers. Whether you’re looking to add a personal touch to your branding or simply want a unique font, MIX LABEL has got you covered. Don’t settle for boring, generic fonts – label your designs with MIX LABEL and stand out from the crowd. Includes the following characters: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789 !@$#%^&*()`~♥❤✿•· ÷×+−±≈=≠≥≤[]‹›:;'",.|/?{}“”‘’-–—_ …©®™«»°¹²³ªº¡¿x₱¢€£¥§№† ÁÀÂÄÃÅĂĀĄÆĆĈČÇÐĐÉÈÊËĖĒĘĜĤIÍÌÎÏĪĮĴŁŃÑŇ ÓÒÔÖÕØŌŐŒŔŘŚŜŠȘŤȚÚÙÛÜŮŰŪŲẂẀŴÝŶŸŹẐŽŻÞ áàâäãåăāąæćĉčçðđéèêëėēęĝĥıíìîïīįĵłńñň óòôöõøōőœŕřśŝšșťțúùûüůűūųẃẁŵýŷÿźẑžżþß Discretionary Ligatures: bb dd ee gg kk ll mm nn oo pp tt

Take The Money is a wonky all caps font, made with a Sharpie pen. The name was inspired by something I read in the newspaper: apparently a Danish artist received €72.000 from a museum to create two works of art. The works of art should depict the average income of someone from Austria and someone from Denmark - in real money. The museum then loaned him the €72.000 and told him he'd receive €3.300 for his work. The artist decided that €3.300 would merely cover the costs, so he delivered two empty canvases and called the work: Take The Money And Run.

A long time ago, I lived and worked in the English Lake District. When I first arrived there, I camped out not far from a neolithic monument called Castlerigg Stone Circle. Castlerigg Stone Circle is one of the most beautiful stone circles in the whole of Britain; the views are great and it makes for a nice walk from Keswick. This rather grungy font was made with a Sharpie pen I initially wanted to throw away, because it was dry, but then decided I could at least get one more font out of it. The result is Castlerigg - a rather neolithic looking all caps font. Castlerigg comes with double letter ligatures for the lower case.

Disruptor's Script is the alter ego of our previous project Gentlemen's Script. Unlike the Gentlemen's Script, the new font is an elegant rebel and defies traditions. The font is painted with a brush pen, which is especially noticeable in the characteristic shabbiness and different thicknesses of the strokes. While the Gentlemen's Script is an embodiment of a classic costume, dress shoes and an expensive watch, Disruptor's Script is a fashionable suit, sneakers, an iWatch and a tattoo that peeks from under the shirt. The font retained the incline, speed and overall sense of dynamics inherent in Gentlemen's Script, but got a bit more chaotic and unpredictable. This is especially noticeable in the newly added shabbiness, elongated extenders, a large number of contextual alternates and different ligatures. For some high-frequency letters (10 for the Latin alphabet and 10 for the Cyrillic alphabet), we painted alternative versions that are substituted in the word instead of the standard characters when following our preceding certain groups of letters. In addition, in the Disruptor's Script you can find functional ligatures, including some of the frequently occurring two- and three-letter combinations. All these solutions dilute the monotonous line of the set, add a bit of unpredictability to the font and a touch of chaos to inscriptions. To fully enjoy usage of the font, we recommend that you always keep the features contextual alternates (calt) and standard ligatures (liga) turned on. If you do not have access to applications that support OpenType features, it does not matter—even without these features you can use and enjoy our font!

Introducing Monteya - a modern serif with vintage charm, fashion look and retro yet modern style. Work fast using integrated features. Just add PLUS (+) after any letter and get alternate instantly. This feature works on most applications (Canva, Templett, Corjl and others) Monteya Regular: Opentype Serif font with clean shapes and accurate kerning. It includes ligatures and alternates with total amount 570 PUA encoded glyphs. Monteya Draft: Modern Serif with chunky imperfect edges and shabby appearance. This font is a strict copy of everything from regular version including glyphs names, kerning and ligatures, so you are worry-free to change style on the go. Alternates appears automatically when you type plus after any letter or even ligature.

Introducing Creative Vintage - a modern serif with vintage charm, fashion look and retro yet modern style. Work fast using integrated features. Just add PLUS (+) after any letter and get alternate instantly. This feature works on most applications (Canva, Templett, Corjl and others) Creative Vintage Regular: Opentype Serif font with clean shapes and accurate kerning. It includes ligatures and alternates with total amount 669 PUA encoded glyphs. Creative Vintage Draft: Modern Serif with chunky imperfect edges and shabby appearance. This font is a strict copy of everything from regular version including glyphs names, kerning and ligatures, so you are worry-free to change style on the go. Alternates appears automatically when you type plus after any letter or even ligature.

I have always had a keen interest in forging; I used to be a silversmith, and I love working with metal. Some time ago I forged my first axe (a skeggøx or bearded axe), sharpened it and fitted it with a handmade ash handle. It isn’t perfect, but it is my first ever forged axe and I’m pretty proud of it. All of this went through my head when I started drawing the glyphs for this font. And to be honest, I couldn’t find a more suitable name for it! Bladesmith is a handmade font, forged in fire (haha). It was actually made with an old sharpie. It is a rough and ready font, quite suited for headlines, book covers and posters.

The Adinkra alphabet is a way to write some of the languages spoken in Ghana and Ivory Coast, such as Akan, Dagbani, Ewe and Ga. It is a simplified version of the Adinkra symbols, and was introduced in 2015 by Charles M. Korankye, who has written a number of books about it. According to tradition, the Adinkra symbols were created by Nana Kwadwo Agyemang Adinkra, the King Gyaman people in the Ashanti region of Ghana from 1810 to 1820. Or they were created by Gyaman people, and the king liked them so much that he wore them on his clothes and named that after himself. The Adinkra symbols are used as decoration, logos, arts, sculpture, pottery and so on. The symbols represent sayings, proverbs or concepts, such as wisdom, authority, strength, unity, love adaptability, wealth, peace, war or agreement. Since Unicode codes have not been assigned yet, it is designed on a latin-based font. Please contact me if you want changes to the keyboard layout.

Roadie was inspired by a 1981 Hallmark card with lettering that was full of frolicking fun. Filled with a childish persona and a playful bounce, this Roadie has a lot to offer. As with some of my previous type designs, it is a typographic dance, wonderfully skipping across designs, surprising with each letter typed. With an extensive character set, and clean sharpie marker-like look, Roadie is a joy to typeset with, and it comes with a stylistic alternates feature that shuffles the Capitals and lowercase that share similar unicase forms that add to the quirky playfulness.

I'm so excited to present my Coal Soul typeface. It has been inspired by underground music video and hand drawn with Sharpie marker. Coal Soul has very unique minimalistic low poly letter form, 3 styles, and illustrations which will allow you to create really outstanding designs. It's perfect to use in logos, posters, music covers, clothes prints and other stuff which needs crazy visual style. Coal Soul Features: Uppercase font Full set of alternates for each letter and number to create a more realistic look Bonus wide alternates for letters "B, C, D, E, F, G, O, Q R" Wide language support (Western European, Central European South Eastern European) Carefully tuned kerning Extra illustrations font If you have some issues or questions, please let me know: lhfonts@gmail.com Hope you'll enjoy using Coal Soul!

Kobely is a reproduction of a local broadcaster's real handwriting. My daughter thought her boss's handwriting was so neat and uniform, it would make a great font and asked if I would be willing to create it. I agreed. She had him write out all the basic characters, which he gladly did with both a standard ink pen and a Sharpie¨ marker. I then turned it into a three weight family, perfect for use on post-it notes, shopping and to-do lists - anywhere you need the natural feel of real handwriting. I created it in various weights to spare you from adding a stroke to make it bolder. Adding a stroke can often compromise the small details of a font. Kobely is designed to be readable in even the boldest weight!

Elyanor is a classic display serif font, drawing inspiration from French Renaissance type. It is available in both regular and italic styles, making it versatile for use in various design projects. Elyanor's serifs make it perfect for creating headlines and titles that grab attention. Additionally, its classic look lends itself well to editorial design, where it can add a touch of sophistication and elegance to text-heavy layouts. Elyanor is also suitable for use in monograms, logos, and branding materials, where its distinctive and memorable appearance can help establish a brand's identity. Its versatility extends to poster design, allowing it to create bold and eye-catching typography that stands out from the crowd. Elyanor is a versatile font that offers a unique and shabby-chic aesthetic, perfect for a wide range of design projects.

Say hello to Supa Mega Fantastic! A casual font duo consisting of a hand-lettered inky script and a casual inked all caps font. The Script comes with a multitude of additional characters as Opentype Alternates, to add a fancy flair to your words as you require. All uppercase characters have a fancy alternate, and all lowercase letters have a selection of alternates for you to select from to suit your wording best. You can have it plain, or fancy shmancy :) The Script comes in two variants - Regular and slightly thinner. The slightly thinner version is best suited to lighter type on darker backgrounds, and the slightly thicker version is better suited to darker type on lighter backgrounds. Perfect for typography based branding, quotes, packaging design, greeting cards, recipe books, cosmetic brands, retro vintage badge design, creative headers and so much more.

Introducing Type Prodigy, a timeless serif logo font that combines classic elegance with modern versatility. This font is a designer's dream, boasting over 310 crafted ligatures and alternate glyphs that add flair and sophistication to any project. With support for 87 languages, Type Prodigy is truly a global font that caters to diverse design needs. Type Prodigy is a font that exudes professionalism, making it perfect for creating logos, branding, editorial designs, and more. Its refined serifs and clean lines convey a sense of authority, while its generous ligatures and alternate glyphs allow for creative customization, making each design truly unique. Whether you're designing for a luxury brand, a boutique business, or a creative agency, Type Prodigy delivers exceptional results. Its extensive character set and language support make it ideal for international clients, enabling you to communicate effectively in multiple languages and markets. With Type Prodigy, you'll have access to a versatile font that combines classic beauty with modern functionality. Its exquisite design and extensive features make it a profitable choice for professional designers who demand the best. Unlock your creative potential with Type Prodigy, and elevate your designs to new heights of excellence. Language Support : Afrikaans, Albanian, Asu, Basque, Bemba, Bena, Breton, Chiga, Colognian, Cornish, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Embu, English, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Galician, Ganda, German, Gusi,i Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jola-Fonyi, Kabuverdianu, Kalenjin, Kamba, Kikuyu, Kinyarwanda, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lower Sorbian, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Maltese, Manx, Meru, Morisyen, North Ndebele, Norwegian, Bokmål, Norwegian, Nynorsk, Nyankole, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Rwa, Samburu, Sango, Sangu, Scottish, Gaelic, Sena, Shambala, Shona, Slovak, Soga, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Swiss, German, Taita, Teso, Turkish, Upper, Sorbian, Uzbek (Latin), Volapük, Vunjo, Walser, Welsh, Western Frisian, Zulu Ligatures : AB,AC,AD,AE,AF,AG,AH,AI,AK,AM,AN,AO,AP,AR,AS,AT,AU,AV,AW,AY,AZ,BA,BE,BF,BG,BH,BM,BO,BU,CA,CB,CC,CE,CF,CG,CH,CI,CK,CL,CO,CQ,CR,CT,CU,DA,DE,DG,DI,DK,DM,DN,DO,DR,DU,EA,EB,ED,EE,EF,EG,EH,EI,EK,EL,EM,EN,EP,ER,ES,ET,EU,EV,EW,EX,EY,FA,FE,FF,FG,FI,FL,FO,FP,FR,FS,FT,FU,FY,GA,GE,GH,GL,GR,HA,HB,HD,HE,HF,HI,HK,HL,HO,HT,IB,IC,ID,IE,IF,IG,IK,IL,IM,IN,IO,IR,IS,IT,IU,KA,KC,KE,KF,KG,KI,KO,KP,KQ,KR,KS,LA,LC,LD,LE,LF,LI,LK,LL,LM,LN,LO,LP,LT,LU,MA,MB,ME,MF,ML,MM,MO,MP,MS,MU,NA,NB,NC,ND,NE,NF,NG,NH,NI,NK,NL,NM,NN,NO,NQ,NT,NU,OA,OB,OC,OD,OE,OF,OG,OH,OI,OK,OL,OM,ON,OO,OP,OR,OT,OU,OV,OW,OX,OY,PA,PC,PE,PF,PG,PM,PN,PO,QA,QE,QU,RA,RB,RC,RD,RE,RF,RG,RH,RI,RK,RL,RM,RN,RO,RP,RR,RS,RT,RU,RY,SA,SD,SG,SS,ST,SU,TC,TD,TE,TF,TH,TI,TK,TL,TM,TN,TO,TP,TR,TT,TU,TW,TY,UH,UK,UL,UM,UN,UO,VA,VE,WA,WD,WE,WF,WO,XA,XC,XE,XT,YE,YO,YT,ZE,MEN,WER,FRO,RON,ROM,THE,AND,ING,HER,HAT,HIS,THA,ERE,FOR,ENT,ION,TER,WAS,YOU,ITH,VER,ALL,THI,TIO,OUL,ULD,IGH,GHT,AVE,HAV,ICH,HIC,HIS,HIN,HEY,ATI,EVE,HING,WERE,FROM,THAT,THER,TION,HERE,OULD,IGHT,HAVE,HICH,THIS,THIN,THEY,ATIO,EVER,MENT How to access alternate glyphs? To access alternate glyphs in Adobe InDesign or Illustrator, choose Window Type & Tables Glyphs In Photoshop, choose Window Glyphs. In the panel that opens, click the Show menu and choose Alternates for Selection. Double-click an alternate's thumbnail to swap them out. Mock ups and backgrounds used are not included. Thank you! Enjoy!

Just before the end of 2020 all schools in Holland closed for the second time, because of an increase in the number of COVID 19 cases. This means that my wife and I have to educate our three kids at home. The kids are great and take their tasks seriously, but it is difficult, as all three of them require different educational levels. I am sure you parents understand. Trying to get some work done is virtually impossible, so my wife and I made a schedule and we live by ‘on duty’ and ‘off duty’ days. I was thinking of this when I created this font (obviously on an ‘off duty’ day). Home Education is a handwritten scribble font. It was made with a Sharpie pen (possibly used by one of my kids, because I noticed tiny ink stains on my wooden dining table…). It comes with all the diacritics you can hope for and lovely double letter ligatures for you to play with.

Let Ark, an Art Nouveau-infused high-contrast serif, transport your designs into the realm of elegant psychedelia. Ark draws deep inspiration from Heinz Keune's Edda, a remarkable design from 1900. While its vibe might evoke the groovy 70s and the mesmerizing world of trippy album covers, Ark transcends any assumed historical shabbiness. It trims the style into a refined and neatly cut serif, suitable for gallery-worthy presentations, all while maintaining a strong and unmistakable connection to its original roots. The standard letters of Ark maintain a respectable demeanor, only scratching the surface of the font's psychedelic potential. To truly unlock its full potency, try the Swash or Stylistic Alternates, or dig for even more Alternates from the Character palette. Needless to say, that Ark is a natural match for anything trendy, artsy, wierd and fun.

Protest is inspired by protest posters and the power of the people! Each glyph is written by hand with a Sharpie® Magnum marker on big sheets of paper. It is designed to fit more into the poster and still be legible for the media from a block away. It's bold, slightly condensed, and neatly drawn with love and conviction, with the warm imperfection that comes from being hand drawn. Protest consists of over 1,430 glyphs. This includes 300 alphanumeric glyphs with 3 contextual alternates each, 20 stylistic alternate glyphs, and 20 protest themed dingbats. Contextual alternates will rotate through automatically when OpenType features are enabled, giving it more human irregularity. Protest supports 219 latin-based languages, using Underware’s Latin Plus glyph set.

The Adinkra name, by legend, comes from the King who was conquered by the Ashante people of Ghana. The king, Adinkra, wore wonderful patterned fabrics. Adinkra means “goodbye,” and the symbols were reserved for funeral garments. Today the symbols are part of the Ghana popular culture and around the world. You will find the symbols on everything from housing, clothing, to tattoos. These 100 symbols are accompanied by the Ghana name, a loose translation and what the symbol has come to represent. The meanings and symbols are by no means the complete list and some people do not use the exact same translations and meaning as you will find here. These are for casual use and not historical or anthropologically completely accurate.

New for 2020 Bodoni Ornamental now has two italics to choose from, one basic italic and a second which is more of a true italic with a few uppercase letters that have been stylized. Only one italic can be style linked to the regular upright version so in the second italic we've added Avanti to the name which means forward in Italian. When purchasing the regular upright and Avanti italic together they will install as two separate families. Bodoni Ornamental is a revival of a very old typeface based on the Poster Bodoni letter shape. Giambattista Bodoni passed away in 1813, this decorative version was created in the 1820’s or 1830’s which was the time period when many of these ultra bold decorated type faces began to appear, the original artist is currently unknown. The original version of this ornate classic was only available as a set of uppercase letters, today over one hundred eighty years later this font is now complete with a new lowercase, numbers and accented characters for Eastern, Central and Western European countries. Due to the ornate detail in Bodoni Ornamental when printing itís recommended to use a laser printer 600dpi or greater, a 1200dpi printer will give you the best results rendering the most detail at the smallest possible point size for this font. Small home user Ink Jet printers are not recommended for Bodoni Ornamental unless you set the font to a very large point size. With Ink Jet printers much of the detail in the letters will bleed together as the ink hits the page, commercial Ink Jet printers such as GiclÈe printers may give good results. When using Bodoni Ornamental for digital images including web site graphics it may help to add a one pixel stroke fill around the letters setting color to white or grey, this may help the web site images display better on some computer's. You will need a photo editing application such as Adobe Photoshop to create your image adding the stroke fill and save as a jpg , png or gif file. I hope you enjoy this old font as much as I did making it. Note: When previewing the Bodoni Ornamental font in the Windows font preview you may notice some letters appearing lighter and some darker, this is a problem with the preview window and some ornate fonts, Bodoni Ornamental will print normal and not with mixed light and dark letters.

Babetta is a display typeface that comes with some decorative typographical features. Alongside a set of arrows and flower icons, it also includes an alternative ›E‹, some special diacritic marks, a wavy ›S‹ and a series of ligatures. It features 5 weights, a special ›Neon‹ version and supports a wide range of Latin languages. This typographical tool box provides a large and playful variety of options for headlines and logotypes. Babetta supports Latin and Cyrillic languages. The initial inspiration for Babetta was an illuminated vintage shop sign—that of a famous bookstore in Berlin called Karl-Marx-Buchhandlung that dates back to the days of East Germany. During the course of the design process, this slightly shabby historical original was kissed by an Italian Art Deco beauty and has blossomed into a new typeface with its own special charm. The aim was not to preserve the original lettering, but to use it as a starting point for typographical exploration.

Helvetica’s 50-year anniversary celebrations in 2007 were overwhelming and contagious. We saw the movie. Twice. We bought the shirts and the buttons. We dug out the homage books and re-read the hate articles. We mourned the fading non-color of an old black shirt proudly exclaiming that “HELVETICA IS NOT AN ADOBE FONT”. We took part in long conversations discussing the merits of the Swiss classic, that most sacred of typographic dreamboats, outlasting its builder and tenants to go on alone and saturate the world with the fundamental truth of its perfect logarithm. We swooned again over its subtleties (“Ah, that mermaid of an R!”). We rehashed decades-old debates about “Hakzidenz,” “improvement in mind” and “less is more.” We dutifully cursed every single one of Helvetica’s knockoffs. We breathed deeply and closed our eyes on perfect Shakti Gawain-style visualizations of David Carson hack'n'slashing Arial — using a Swiss Army knife, no less — with all the infernal post-brutality of his creative disturbance and disturbed creativity. We then sailed without hesitation into the absurdities of analyzing Helvetica’s role in globalization and upcoming world blandness (China beware! Helvetica will invade you as silently and transparently as a sheet of rice paper!). And at the end of a perfect celebratory day, we positively affirmed à la Shakti, and solemnly whispered the energy of our affirmation unto the universal mind: “We appreciate Helvetica for getting us this far. We are now ready for release and await the arrival of the next head snatcher.” The great hype of Swisspalooza '07 prompted a look at Max Miedinger, the designer of Neue Haas Grotesk (later renamed to Helvetica). Surprisingly, what little biographical information available about Miedinger indicates that he was a typography consultant and type sales rep for the Haas foundry until 1956, after which time he was a freelance graphic designer — rather than the full-time type designer most Helvetica enthusiasts presume him to have been. It was under that freelance capacity that he was commissioned to design the regular and bold weights of Neue Haas Grotesk typeface. His role in designing Helvetica was never really trumpeted until long after the typeface attained global popularity. And, again surprisingly, Miedinger designed two more typefaces that seem to have been lost to the dust of film type history. One is called Pro Arte (1954), a very condensed Playbill-like slab serif that is similar to many of its genre. The other, made in 1964, is much more interesting. Its original name was Horizontal. Here it is, lest it becomes a Haas-been, presented to you in digital form by Canada Type under the name of its original designer, Miedinger, the Helvetica King. The original film face was a simple set of bold, panoramically wide caps and figures that give off a first impression of being an ultra wide Gothic incarnation of Microgramma. Upon a second look, they are clearly more than that. This face is a quirky, very non-Akzidental take on the vernacular, mostly an exercise in geometric modularity, but also includes some unconventional solutions to typical problems (like thinning the midline strokes across the board to minimize clogging in three-storey forms). This digital version introduces four new weights, ranging from Thin to Medium, alongside the bold original. The Miedinger package comes in all popular font formats, and supports Western, Central and Eastern European languages, as well as Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish and Celtic/Welsh. A few counter-less alternates are included in the fonts.

When Patricia Lillie was growing up, she thought the coolest thing in the world would be finding her own name listed in a library catalog. The fantasy came true in 1986 when her first children's book was published. Five more followed. The thrill of seeing her work on library shelves hasn't abated, but today, Lillie is just as likely to see one of her typefaces on the cover of a book. She has created several display faces and image fonts. My first typeface designs were based on lettering I'd done while working for a library, doing graphics work for the children's section," she explains. "I currently do a lot of web design, but type is my favorite thing." The Tickles (ITC Tickle and ITC Tickle Too) are Lillie's first ITC typeface releases. "I was playing around with a Sharpie marker one day and liked the way the letters looked," she recalls. "I started redoing the letters from scratch in Fontographer to see what developed, and liked those letters too." ITC Tickle is a bi-form font (with both cap and lowercase letters of the same size) that clearly breaks a typographic rule or two. ITC Tickle Too has the same basic lettershapes, but they've grown clusters of stipples that give a three-dimensional quality to the design. The result is a friendly, offbeat display family that's guaranteed to add a giggle to your work."

Quinoa is display typeface by Catharsis Fonts that unites the seemingly opposed concepts of clean geometric architecture and organic humanist warmth. While it is designed for display and editorial purposes, its accessible forms make for comfortable reading even at small text sizes. Its exuberant adaptive "f", "j", "Q" and refreshing titling alternates bring display text to life. Quinoa covers multilingual Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Armenian. The Quinoa family spans four stylistic cuts (Quinoa, Quinoa Titling, Quinoa Round, and Quinoa Text) with matching hand-slanted obliques, each of which comes in nine weights. The Titling cut offers a number of alternate capital letter designs with lowercase-inspired forms for a refreshing unicase look, and the Round cut additionally removes the spurs from arched letters like n. The text cut introduces true diagonals and a two-storey "a" for a more sober, reading-friendly look. A host of other OpenType features including ligatures, contextual alternates, small caps, figure sets, and character variants are built into all cuts. Furthermore, the small caps of Quinoa, Quinoa Titling, and Quinoa Text are available as dedicated font files under the names "Quinoa SC", "Quinoa Unicase" and "Quinoa Text SC" for ease of use. Acknowledgements: I am thankful to the TypeDrawers and the Typografie.info communities for great feedback and support. In particular, Thorsten Daum has been tremendously helpful with suggestions and quality control. Thanks to Craig Eliason and Jan Willem Wennekes for their help with the Latin, Alexander L. Stetsiuk for Cyrillic, Ofir Shavit and Jonathan N. Washington for Hebrew, Khaled Hosny for Arabic, and Hrant H. Papazian for Armenian.

Our Binder Family is a revival and expansion of Binder-Style, a typeface designed by Joseph Binder and released by D. Stempel AG in 1959. It originally was a single weight. In later film type adaptations, a bold style, and an outline with drop shadow style were made available. However, this typeface never really had a true sense of family or larger language compatible character set. The original Binder-style typeface found revived popularity with its super condensed style when it appeared on the movie poster for "Silence of the Lambs". It was always a disappointment to me how this typestyle had never gained more traction in use. And so, many years later, we decided to revive the original typestyle, and expand it with a range of weights and obliques to pair with those weights. We've moved most of the unusual lowercase forms to a Stylistic Alternates feature, along with unicast alternates for the Capitals. The family includes a full standard character set with expansive international support of latin based languages, and 4 weights jumping from Thin to Bold, along with 4 accompanying obliques. This family is ready for you to eat it up with a nice glass of Chianti. Here's what's included with the Binder Family: 538 glyphs per style - including Capitals, Lowercase, Numerals, Punctuation and an extensive character set that covers multilingual support of latin based languages. 4 weights: Thin, Light, Regular, & Bold. Accompanying Obliques with each weight/width style. TTF formatted fonts have been hinted for optimal performance. Here's why the Binder Family is for you: You're in need of a stylish condensed font with a variety of weights and obliques for your designs You're a fan of the typographic works of Joseph Binder, but wish there was more to them You love the style of Agency and Bank Gothic, but want something uber-narrow You are desperate to recreate the movie poster from Silence of the Lambs You just like to collect quality fonts to add to your design arsenal

From the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, by way of Toronto, comes Martie's handwriting. Martie Byrd is a school teacher in Roanoke, Virginia, and a friend of Canada Type's Rebecca Alaccari. After years of admiring the cheer and clarity of Martie's handwriting, we asked her to write out full alphabets for some cool font treatment. The intent was to do three different versions of her writing in two different pens, then use the auto-magic of OpenType to determine letter sequences and rotate character sets on the fly when the fonts are in use. A successful endeavor it was. Take a look at the images in the MyFonts gallery to see the character rotation in action, along with a visual explanation of why Martie is not just another handwriting font. Unlike other available felt tip and ballpoint handwriting fonts, the regular and bold variations are style-based, not weight-based. They are the handwritten expressions of two different Sharpie pens: The fine point one (Martie Bold), and the ultrafine one (Martie Regular). The style-based variation considerably helps the realism needed in design pieces that take advantage of the contrast of two different handwriting fonts. Weight thickening in handwriting is an obvious mechanical effect that only happens with computers. Weight changing by replacing pens is what happens in the real world. Martie Pro and Martie Pro Bold each contain three different character sets in a single font. Language support includes Western, Central and Eastern European languages for all three sets. This translates into each Pro font containing over 750 characters. Add OpenType code and stir, and you have true handwriting fonts with versatility unavailable out there in anything else of the genre. A software program that supports OpenType features is needed to use the randomization coded in Martie Pro and Martie Pro Bold. Current versions of QuarkXpress and Adobe applications (Photoshop, Illlustrator, InDesign) do contain support for the randomization feature. But if you don't have one of these apps, you can still use the interchangeable Type 1 or True Type fonts and change the characters manually to achieve the appearance of true handwriting. The Martie fonts come in a variety of price packages, from the affordable single fonts to value-laden complete sets. All the proceeds from these fonts received by Canada Type will be donated 50/50 to two primary schools: One in Roanoke (where Martie teaches), and one in Toronto (where the 10-year old, real Canada Type boss goes). So next time a design project needs a handwriting font, do the write thing and use Martie to keep it real.

Jill Bell's typefaces are energetic, highly decorative, and refreshingly unpredictable. Some are friendly and childlike, while others are rough and nervous. Her latest creation is ITC Swank, a connected script whose shabby-chic" sophistication communicates a worn elegance. Bell begins the design process "with black stuff on white paper," she explains, preferring to draw letters before she digitizes them. Often the inspiration for her typefaces comes from a piece of hand-lettering. "Bruno began as a reminder to buy cat food," she says, "and ITC Swank started out as a small bit of lettering for Wurlitzer Pianos." Bell finds that working with blocks of lettering is a good start for script typefaces. "If I'm drawing a script typeface, I have to write out sentences in the letters first," she explains. "Drawing each letter separately doesn't establish the flow and spontaneity that scripts deserve." Bell's newest design is ITC Swank. It's a somewhat tattered formal script with definite links to early copperplate scripts. Though probably not for wedding invitations, Swank's elegant underpinnings are evident, with its slightly narrow proportions and a baseline that can best be called "bouncy." Graphic designers will appreciate the abundance of swash letters, making it easy to create distinctive headlines and short blocks of copy. Bell has a fondness for the "open, genuine" quality of Chinese and Japanese calligraphy. "Eastern styles incorporate the natural flow of the hand," she says. "Natural, human qualities shine through. Mistakes are accepted, not scorned as in the 'white-out' Western culture." This philosophy is evident in Bell's own designs. Whether it's ITC Clover 's carefree spirit, the slightly spooky Hollyweird, Caribbean 's< rustic charm or the weathered elegance of ITC Swank, there is a natural honesty in her work."