The Bree font family is a spry sans serif by Veronika Burian and José Scaglione that delivers a spirited look and feel for branding and headline usage. As an upright italic, Bree shows a pleasant mix of rather unobtrusive capitals with more vivid lowercase letters, giving text a lively appearance. Bree is clearly influenced by handwriting. As such, some of its most characteristic features are the single-story ‘a’, the cursive ‘e’, the outstroke curves of ‘v’ and ‘w’, the flourished ‘Q’, and the fluid shapes of ‘g’, ‘y’, and ‘z’. Alternates of these letters are available when a more neutral look is desired. Bree has a touch of cheekiness, a wide stance for each character, and an extra-large x-height. All this adds up to a big personality, so even when set in small text there is no skimming past the words Bree voices. In 2019, the Bree font family got a huge update. A few shapes were updated or added (the ‘k’ and German capital ‘ß’), two entirely new weights were added (Book and Book Italic), and spacing was perfected. More than that, Vietnamese support was added to Bree Latin, and the Bree Greek and Bree Cyrillic scripts were designed from scratch to parallel the Latin’s tone. Additionally, Bree was designed in variable font format for those who want complete control over the font’s appearance while simultaneously saving digital weight in the form of kilobytes and megabytes. Bree is in the perfect position for the next digital revolution. The complete Bree font family, along with our entire catalogue, has been optimised for today’s varied screen uses. Bree has been chosen for such wide-ranging uses as Breast Cancer Awareness Month in the US, the branding for the country of Peru, and numerous layouts including mobile apps, magazines, newspapers, and books. Awards – Tipos Latinos exhibition 2008 – Several best-of-the-year typeface lists of 2008 MyFonts Top 10 Fonts of 2008 Smashing Magazine: 60 Brilliant Typefaces For Corporate Design https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/03/60-brilliant-typefaces-for-corporate-design/ Die besten Schriften 2008 http://www.fontwerk.com/619/die-besten-schriften-2008/ – Selected for Typographica’s Best Typefaces of 2008 – Won Bronze for Original Typeface in the 2009 European Design Awards

The history of Able’s connection with the Harry Potter phenomenon is really up in the air. It’s a catch-22 in this business - you either promote your own work and negotiate expensive exclusive licenses, or you work with a promoter and sell your designs to anyone and everyone. It could have been an in-house designer at Rowling’s publisher, Scholastic, or a freelancer who proposed Able for the headings and such. The responsible party licensed it from T26, and JK Rowling’s storytelling made it a star. (I suppose it’s ironic that there’s a whole lot of unwritten history in the typography business.) Able’s rise to fame really is a classic love story between reading and type design. If the books weren’t so popular, Able might still be waiting for some Mexican fast food chain to pick it up for packaging design. The movie deal certainly made the font all the more recognizable, what with its merchandising campaign. Popularity can also cripple a great decorative face. It’s always being recognized as “The Harry Potter Font.” It might just have to wait a few decades for the Potter phenomenon to subside to be freed from the “Chamber of Pigeonholed Fonts.” In the meantime, I’m sure that a lot of fledgling graphic design apprentices are reading their new Potter books, being charmed by the idea of type design when they’re not turning the pages too fast to notice.

Rothek is a geometric sans serif type family with a strong and unique character. It comes in 22 weights — 11 uprights and 11 italics — and is a perfect tool for any designer who needs a versatile font for a variety of projects. While retaining its uniqueness and whimsicality, Rothek is highly legible even at smaller weights, which makes it a perfect fit for app and web design. But what’s really great about Rothek is its OpenType features, which make it really stand out. Not only does it know how to do fractions, but it also does subscript and superscript; it’s equipped with case-sensitive punctuation, which adjusts the height of your parentheses, hyphens (and many more) to the height of your capital letters. But there’s still more: Rothek is loaded with various figures — from default proportional numerals to oldstyle figures, tabular figures and tabular old style figures. Throw in a bunch of stylistic alternates and you’ve got a perfect typeface for any project. Rothek supports all European languages and Vietnamese. On top of that there’s Extended Cyrillic set for most Slavic languages. As a cherry on top, there are stylistic alternatives for selected glyphs both in Latin and Cyrillic layouts and lots of extra symbols to work and experiment with. With 900+ glyphs in each style, Rothek is a perfect workhorse font for those who need a modern sans serif font with a strong character. Two weights are free to try and use!

Y’all ready for this? Now starting for Insigne: the new serif Mirantz. This rookie all-star plays a precise game every game, cutting at all the right angles to leave your reader impressed and ready to see more. You can always count on Mirantz to lead with solid mechanics and a clean style, but don’t be surprised when the face keeps it real with a little individual flare and creativity. This personal touch is nothing short of elegance in every appearance. So what makes us love this rookie above the other great players in the field? Contrast, for one. Mirantz brings more contrast to the game than most serifs out there. The serifs on this face have a crisp, sharp wedge that naturally draws the reader’s eye. You can’t help but fall in love with its clean, natural style. Mirantz also features a tall x-height and regular proportions that can play a number of positions on the page and still stay strong through the last half of the copy or even the final period. Mirantz is a solid powerhouse player, containing a complete set of small capitals and nine weights from thin to bold. It can play well both down low and up top with its subscripts and superscripts and can move your reader’s eye easily across the copy with its titling capitals, condensed and extended variants, and open style figures. With its options covering more than 72 Latin-based languages, look for this newcomer to have international success in the near future. It you haven’t set your draft picks for this next round of projects, think hard before passing up Mirantz. A capable serif like this one is a guaranteed asset to any team of fonts. Production assistance from Lucas Azevedo.

Minimal, modular, modern—at first glance, Materia shows a contemporary flair, combining pure, strong geometrical form with a subtle, distinct appearance. Actually, the design was inspired by lettering from the turn of the 19th to the 20th century that still can be found in the East of France. While its formal origins date back as far as this, revived e. g. by the constructivists into the nineteen twenties and later on by Dutch information designer Wim Crouwel in the nineteen-sixties, the visual language of Materia still speaks of the »future«. Following a minimalistic concept the font is formally built on a grid. Wherever optical curves are needed for a smoother, more comfortable shape of letters than a simple rectangular block, diagonals cut off the egdes – like a diamond is cut to achieve more beauty. Thus headlines and texts set in Materia are given a certain »egdy« feeling, whereas their tonality is still kept well-balanced, keeping concentation all on information in a nonconfomist way. Materia comes in eight styles, from elegant Thin to attention-forcing Ultra. Even a regular Italic is available, following the classic type-set-principle. Two of the styles are explicitly designed for display use, Shadow and Code. Both are ready for combinations with Bold or each other respectively, the layering of Shadow and Code e. g. allows astonishing effects or highlighting within the letters. For OpenType-users Materia is a real Pro, containing accented Latin letters for over 70 languages, small caps, old style, tabular and lining figures and special condensed titling all caps for cases in which space is all that counts. How useful all of the above mentioned is may be seen in the book David Lynch – Lithos, designed by Koma Amok, published in 2010 by item éditions, Paris, and Hatje Cantz, Germany, which was typeset completely in Materia.

Mutable is as flamboyant and changeable as its name suggests. These characterful fonts were designed specifically for display purposes. It’s an exuberant type family that’s jam-packed with alternates and bestowed with a loud personality. This typeface is defined by its barbed serifs and elegantly curved terminals, or “foxtails” as they are sometimes known. An extremely large x-height amplifies the friendliness and buoyancy of the lowercase glyphs. These qualities give Mutable a unique aesthetic that will undoubtedly give your logotypes, headlines, and titles a distinctive appeal. Mutable has a strong Art Nouveau influence and was mainly inspired by Ed Benguiat’s Tiffany and the mysterious Pretorian typeface accredited to P.M. Shanks and Sons of London. Special OpenType features include 523 alternates that will make each word resonate beautifully when used in titling and branding situations. With so many alternates available, you may find it difficult to stop playing and settle on a selection... but that’s a good thing, right? Small Caps are also included (along with their matching diacritics and alternates) – these are designed to harmonise with regular lowercase forms making unicase-style typography a cinch. Mutable has a total glyph count of over 2,400 characters. There are 9 weights across 2 widths, ranging from a delicate and wispy Narrow Thin to a chunky and imposing Ultra. And... it’s variable! This allows you to select any width or weight in between, making Mutable even more... erm... mutable! This type family has an extensive character set that covers all Latin European languages. Finally, you can test drive Mutable immediately as the Regular weight is offered as a free download. Key features: 9 Weights 2 Widths Variable Small Caps 500+ Alternates Old Style Figures European Language Support (Latin) 2400+ Glyphs per font

Classic Grotesque by Rod McDonald: a traditional font with a modern face. The growing popularity of grotesque typefaces meant that many new sans serif analogues were published in the early 20th century. Setting machines were not compatible with each other but all foundries wanted to offer up-to-date fonts, and as a result numerous different typeface families appeared that seem almost identical at first glance and yet go their separate ways with regard to details. One of the first fonts created with automatic typesetting in mind was Monotype Grotesque®. Although this typeface that was designed and published by Frank Hinman Pierpont in 1926 has since been digitalised, it has never achieved the status of other grotesque fonts of this period. But Monotype Grotesque was always one of designer Rod McDonald’s favourites, and he was overjoyed when he finally got the go-ahead from Monotype in 2008 to update this “hidden treasure”. The design process lasted four years, with regular interruptions due to the need to complete projects for other clients. In retrospect, McDonald admits that he had no idea at the beginning of just how challenging and complex a task it would be to create Classic Grotesque™. It took him considerable time before he found the right approach. In his initial drafts, he tried to develop Monotype Grotesque only to find that the result was almost identical with Arial®, a typeface that is also derived in many respects from Monotype Grotesque. It was only when he went back a stage, and incorporated elements of Bauer Font’s Venus™ and Ideal Grotesk by the Julius Klinkhardt foundry into the design process, that he found the way forward. Both these typefaces had served as the original inspiration for Monotype Grotesque. The name says it all: Classic Grotesque has all the attributes of the early grotesque fonts of the 20th century: The slightly artificial nature gives the characters a formal appearance. There are very few and only minor variations in line width. The tittles of the ‘i’ and ‘j’, the umlaut diacritic and other diacritic marks are rectangular. Interestingly, it is among the uppercase letters that certain variations from the standard pattern can be found, and it is these that enliven the typeface. Hence the horizontal bars of the “E”, “F” and “L” have bevelled terminals. The chamfered terminal of the bow of the “J” has a particular flamboyance, while the slightly curved descender of the “Q” provides for additional dynamism. The character alternatives available through the OpenType option provide the designer with a wealth of opportunities. These include a closed “a”, a double-counter “g” and an “e” in which the transverse bar deviates slightly from the horizontal. The seven different weights also extend the scope of uses of Classic Grotesque. These range from the delicate Light to the super thick Extrabold. There are genuine italic versions of each weight; these are not only slightly narrower than their counterparts, but also have variant shapes. The “a” is closed, the “f” has a semi-descender while the “e” is rounded. Its neutral appearance and excellent features mean that Classic Grotesque is suitable for use in nearly all imaginable applications. Even during the design phase, McDonald used his new font to set books and in promotional projects. However, he would be pleased to learn of possible applications that he himself has not yet considered. Classic Grotesque, which has its own individual character despite its neutral and restrained appearance, is the ideal partner for your print and web project.

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.

Proud to introduce: The all hand-drawn Mila Script Pro Family Mila Script is a handmade brush script with round and soft letterforms, a low x-height and jumping baseline. Smart OpenType features care about all letterforms and choose between connected and non-connected styles. AutomaticSwashControl adjusts the swashy letters to the available white space. It’s installed within Mila’s main features OpenType Contextual-Alternates, Swashes and Titling-Alternates. Switch one on and let Mila do the rest. · Please read over the manual. It describes the family in detail. · Of course there’s a little more know about Mila Script Pro: 2600+ characters offer four different initial styles, capital swash and titling alternates, connected words, 17 different initial and terminal swashes and much more. All of course with full ISO latin 1 & 2 language support. · Mila Script Basic (900+ characters) offers all single features contained in OpenType Contextual-Alternates: subtle contextual swash alternates, positional forms, ligatures, connecting and non-connecting characters … · Mila Script Sans: Mila Script Sans is a hand-drawn/handwritten “all caps” in three different weights. Mila Script and Mila Script Sans go well together: combine them and equal the line weights by choosing Light, Regular or Bold. Always keep it way smaller than Mila Script. Mila Script Sans also works well as a standalone. It offers negative typesetting, bicolor typesetting by layering two styles and even alternates without counters. Please see the manual for instructions. · Mila Script Ornaments: Change the size and keep the line weight: activate Contextual Alternates, type a letter and add + to enlarge all swashes according to your likings. Mila Script Ornaments contains 69 different swashes and symbols, all of them available in seven different sizes, which makes a total of 483 characters. All ornaments are within easy reach and there’s no need to access certain symbols manually via your glyph palette. · Have fun! · View other fonts from Georg Herold-Wildfellner: Sofa Serif | Sofa Sans | Mila Script Pro | Pinto | Supernett | Mr Moustache | Aeronaut | Ivory | Weingut · Language Report for Mila Script / 195 languages supported: Abenaki, Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Amis, Anuta, Aragonese, Aranese, Aromanian, Arrernte, Arvanitic, Asturian, Aymara, Bashkir, Basque, Bikol, Bislama, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chickasaw, Cimbrian, Cofan, Corsican, Creek, Crimean Tatar, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Delaware, Dholuo, Drehu, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, Folkspraak, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz, Galician, Genoese, German, Gooniyandi, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean, Gwichin, Haitian Creole, Han, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hopi, Hotcak, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ido, Ilocano, Indonesian, Interglossa, Interlingua, Irish, Istroromanian, Italian, Jamaican, Javanese, Jerriais, Kala Lagaw Ya, Kapampangan, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak, Karelian, Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kiribati, Kirundi, Klingon, Ladin, Latin, Latino Sine, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lojban, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Maori, Marquesan, Meglenoromanian, Meriam Mir, Mohawk, Moldovan, Montagnais, Montenegrin, Murrinhpatha, Nagamese Creole, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Ngiyambaa, Niuean, Noongar, Norwegian, Novial, Occidental, Occitan, Oshiwambo, Ossetian, Palauan, Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Potawatomi, Qeqchi, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Rotokas, Sami Lule, Sami Southern, Samoan, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian, Seri, Seychellois, Shawnee, Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Slovio, Somali, Sorbian Lower, Sorbian Upper, Sotho Northern, Sotho Southern, Spanish, Sranan, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tokelauan, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen, Tuvaluan, Tzotzil, Uzbek, Venetian, Vepsian, Volapuk, Voro, Wallisian, Walloon, Waraywaray, Warlpiri, Wayuu, Welsh, Wikmungkan, Wiradjuri, Xhosa, Yapese, Yindjibarndi, Zapotec, Zulu, Zuni

While researching the history of Onitsuka Tiger's branding and graphic design, I came across an odd, yet highly appealing piece of custom lettering on the company's ONICK ski boots from the 1970s. Reminiscent of aspects of the typeface Black-Out by Eli Carrico (released by my type foundry Wordshape), yet vertically compressed with razor-sliced counters and odd stencil element that makes up one of the legs of the "K", the ONICK lettering is a potential source for an intriguing modular font. I immediately thought of Ryoichi Tsunekawa as a potential collaborator to bring this piece of lettering to full-fledged life in the contemporary context. Based in Nagoya, Tsunekawa runs an independent type foundry called Dharma Type, including three specialized foundry sub-labels: Flat-It, devoted to display lettering; Prop-A-Ganda, a series of fonts inspired by and based on retro propaganda posters, movie posters, retail sign lettering & advertisements in the early 20th century; and Holiday Type, a series of decorative and retro scripts for holiday use. The past year has seen a flurry of notice of his work abroad, having been featured in both MyFonts' "Creative Characters" and YouWorkForThem's newsletter. As the work of most Japanese type designers is almost wholly unnoticed abroad, for Tsunekawa to be interviewed by two of the most popular type distribution companies in the world is definitely something beyond the norm. Perhaps it is because he works independently, or perhaps it is due to the charm and friendliness with which his typefaces are infused. Either way, this attention is both welcome and appreciated. Beyond mere charm, Tsunekawa's work is nuanced, detailed, and accessible due to its high level of finish. His fonts stand apart from his contemporaries in Latin typeface design in Japan due to his fascination with pop, vernacular and historical lettering from "non-pure" sources- whereas type designers like Kunihiko Okano and Akira Kobayashi have spent years analyzing the essence of Western letterform construction and unlocking the essence of Latin forms, Tsunekawa views surface and the awkward nature of his sources as being of value, as well. His irreverence for the formal doctrines of history imbue his typeface designs with a rugged inventiveness that would be missed by most- glyphs without source designs are guessed at and approximated, often in a manner wildly divergent from what Western eyes would assume. It is in these moments that I find sheer delight in Tsunekawa’s work and what make me most pleased to invite him aboard Neojaponisme and Onitsuka Tiger’s type development project. His assorted typefaces show an eclecticism in finish and as holistic systems- Tsunekawa's return email to me about the proposed type project showed a digital sketch of how a completed typeface family from the source lettering might look, rendered with an effortlessness and dedication to detail that belies a skilled craftsperson. Further development showed Tsunekawa’s rigor- the typeface in development rapidly featured glyphs ignored by many: a full set of fractions, Eastern European diacritics and accents, superior and inferior numerals, alternate characters, and custom ligatures - all designed with regulated, detailed spacing. ONICK is a typeface Tsunekawa should be proud of- an homage to a moment in history rendered in the absolute best fashion. We are proud to present it to the world! --Ian Lynam