Worldly Even though it’s a new arrival, FS Brabo has seen the world. Designed by a Brazilian working in London and studying in Belgium under a Dutchman, it’s certainly well-travelled. And it was inspired by the extraordinary archive of early book typefaces at the world-renowned Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, while Fernando Mello was attending Frank Blokland’s Expert class Type Design course at the Plantin Institute of Typography. It was there that Fernando became engrossed in the collection of early metal type, matrices, punches and type samples by figures such as Garamond and Granjon. So much so that he took on the mighty task of developing ‘a beautiful, functional, serifed text font’ of his own. Heroic FS Brabo’s journey from sketch to font family took an epic three years, starting in Antwerp, continuing at Fontsmith in London, and reaching its conclusion back in Fernando’s home city of São Paulo. No wonder Fernando was reminded of another titanic face-off: that of Antwerp’s Roman hero of legend, Silvius Brabo, and the evil ogre, Antigoon. Brabo came to the town’s rescue after the tyrannical giant had been charging ships’ captains extortionate taxes and chopping off the hands of those who refused to pay up. Having finally downed Antigoon after a long and terrible duel, Brabo cut off the giant’s own hand and threw it into the river Scheldt, unwittingly giving the town its name: the Dutch for ‘hand-throw’ is hand werpen. What better way for Fernando to name his literary typeface than after the hero of Antwerp’s oldest tale? The garalde factor FS Brabo is not a revival, but a very much a contemporary, personal interpretation of a garalde – a class of typeface originating in the 16th century that includes Bembo, Garamond and Plantin, with characteristically rounded serifs and moderate contrast between strokes. Brabo’s ‘ct’ and ‘st’ ligatures, upper-case italic swashes and contextual ending ligatures – ‘as’, ‘is’, ‘us’ – all preserve the beauty and character of traditional typefaces, but its serifs are chunkier than a garalde. Their sharp cuts and squared edges give them a crispness at text sizes, helping to bring a beautifully bookish personality to hardworking modern applications. A workhorse with pedigree It may give the appearance of a simple, four-weight typeface, but FS Brabo has hidden depths beneath its simplicity and beauty. OpenType features such as cap italic swashes, contextual ending swashes – programmed only to appear at the end of words – and stylistic alternatives make this a complete and well-equipped typeface. Comprehensive testing was carried out at text and display sizes, too, to prevent counters from filling in. All of which makes FS Brabo a very modern take on a traditional workhorse serif typeface: colourful and versatile enough to adorn not just editorial projects but also signage, advertising and logotypes.

Silent films evoke a sense of nostalgia that is as timeless as the era itself. While the stars of silent cinema may have faded into the past, their influence is still felt in modern-day art, fashion, and design. Silentina is a typeface that embodies the spirit of the silent film era, inspired by the intertitles that were used to convey crucial information to audiences during these films. Buster Keaton, Mary Pickford, Clara Bow, and Rudolph Valentino all graced the silver screen with their emotive faces during the silent film era. These icons used their expressions to convey a range of emotions that captivated audiences and made them fall in love with the magic of cinema. Intertitles, the brief messages that would appear on-screen during the film, were just as essential in conveying information to moviegoers. Silentina is a typeface that pays homage to the unsung heroes of the silent film era—the intertitles. It channels the glitz and glamour of the roaring twenties, taking us back to a time of flapper dresses, jazz music, and speakeasies. But Silentina isn’t just a typeface—it’s a portal to another era. It transports us to a time when movies were an escape from reality, and each trip to the cinema was a chance to lose ourselves in a world of adventure and romance. With Silentina, you can project your message in the same way that the stars of silent cinema projected theirs. This typeface captures the essence of a bygone era, bringing it to life in the modern world. Use it to convey plot information, set the scene, or add a touch of vintage charm to your design. Whatever your message, Silentina will help you communicate it in the same glitzy way as the intertitles of the silent film era. Most Latin-based European writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aromanian, Aymara, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kurdish (Latin), Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Moldovan, Montenegrin, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Ossetian (Latin), Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Sami, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wolof, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec Zulu and Zuni.

Gérard Mariscalchi is a self-made designer. Born in Southern France of a Spanish mother and an Italian father, he has worked as a mechanic, salesman, pilot, college teacher – even a poet (with poetry being the worst-paying of these professions, he reports.) “Throughout all this, the backbone of my career has always been design,” Mariscalchi says. “I’ve been drawing since I was five, but it wasn’t until I was twenty-four that I learned that my hobby could also help me earn a living.” It was about this same time that Mariscalchi fell in love with type. He studied the designs of masters like Excoffon, Usherwood and Frutiger, as well as the work of calligraphers and type designers such as Plantin, Cochin and Dürer. With such an eclectic background, it’s no surprise that Mariscalchi’s typeface designs are inspired by many sources. Baylac and Evita reflect the style of the art nouveau and art deco periods, while Marnie was created as an homage to the great Lithuanian calligrapher Villu Toots. However, the touch of French elegance and distinction Mariscalchi brings to his work is all his own. Baylac Who says thirteen is an unlucky number? Three capitals and ten lowercase letters from a poster by L. Baylac, a relatively obscure Art Nouveau designer, served as the foundation for this typeface. The finished design has lush curves that give the face drama without diminishing its versatility. On the practical side, Baylac’s condensed proportions make it perfect for those situations where there’s a lot to say and not much room in which to say it Evita Mariscalchi based the design of Evita on hand lettering he found in a restaurant menu, and considers this typeface one of his most difficult design challenges. “The main problem was to render the big weight difference between the thin and the thick strokes without creating printing problems at small point sizes,” he says. Unlike most scripts, Evita is upright, with the design characteristics of a serif typeface. Mariscalchi named the face for a close friend. The end result is a charming design that is light, airy, and slightly sassy. Marnie Based on Art Nouveau calligraphic lettering, Marnie is elegant, inviting, and absolutely charming. Mariscalchi paid special attention to letter shapes and proportions to guarantee high levels of character legibility. He also kept weight transition in character strokes to modest levels, enabling the face to be used at relatively small sizes – an unusual asset for a formal script. Marnie’s capital letters are expansive designs with flowing swash strokes that wrap affectionately around adjoining lowercase letters. The design easily captures the spontaneous qualities of hand-rendered brush lettering.

Gérard Mariscalchi is a self-made designer. Born in Southern France of a Spanish mother and an Italian father, he has worked as a mechanic, salesman, pilot, college teacher – even a poet (with poetry being the worst-paying of these professions, he reports.) “Throughout all this, the backbone of my career has always been design,” Mariscalchi says. “I’ve been drawing since I was five, but it wasn’t until I was twenty-four that I learned that my hobby could also help me earn a living.” It was about this same time that Mariscalchi fell in love with type. He studied the designs of masters like Excoffon, Usherwood and Frutiger, as well as the work of calligraphers and type designers such as Plantin, Cochin and Dürer. With such an eclectic background, it’s no surprise that Mariscalchi’s typeface designs are inspired by many sources. Baylac and Evita reflect the style of the art nouveau and art deco periods, while Marnie was created as an homage to the great Lithuanian calligrapher Villu Toots. However, the touch of French elegance and distinction Mariscalchi brings to his work is all his own. Baylac Who says thirteen is an unlucky number? Three capitals and ten lowercase letters from a poster by L. Baylac, a relatively obscure Art Nouveau designer, served as the foundation for this typeface. The finished design has lush curves that give the face drama without diminishing its versatility. On the practical side, Baylac’s condensed proportions make it perfect for those situations where there’s a lot to say and not much room in which to say it Evita Mariscalchi based the design of Evita on hand lettering he found in a restaurant menu, and considers this typeface one of his most difficult design challenges. “The main problem was to render the big weight difference between the thin and the thick strokes without creating printing problems at small point sizes,” he says. Unlike most scripts, Evita is upright, with the design characteristics of a serif typeface. Mariscalchi named the face for a close friend. The end result is a charming design that is light, airy, and slightly sassy. Marnie Based on Art Nouveau calligraphic lettering, Marnie is elegant, inviting, and absolutely charming. Mariscalchi paid special attention to letter shapes and proportions to guarantee high levels of character legibility. He also kept weight transition in character strokes to modest levels, enabling the face to be used at relatively small sizes – an unusual asset for a formal script. Marnie’s capital letters are expansive designs with flowing swash strokes that wrap affectionately around adjoining lowercase letters. The design easily captures the spontaneous qualities of hand-rendered brush lettering.

Worldly Even though it’s a new arrival, FS Brabo has seen the world. Designed by a Brazilian working in London and studying in Belgium under a Dutchman, it’s certainly well-travelled. And it was inspired by the extraordinary archive of early book typefaces at the world-renowned Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, while Fernando Mello was attending Frank Blokland’s Expert class Type Design course at the Plantin Institute of Typography. It was there that Fernando became engrossed in the collection of early metal type, matrices, punches and type samples by figures such as Garamond and Granjon. So much so that he took on the mighty task of developing ‘a beautiful, functional, serifed text font’ of his own. Heroic FS Brabo’s journey from sketch to font family took an epic three years, starting in Antwerp, continuing at Fontsmith in London, and reaching its conclusion back in Fernando’s home city of São Paulo. No wonder Fernando was reminded of another titanic face-off: that of Antwerp’s Roman hero of legend, Silvius Brabo, and the evil ogre, Antigoon. Brabo came to the town’s rescue after the tyrannical giant had been charging ships’ captains extortionate taxes and chopping off the hands of those who refused to pay up. Having finally downed Antigoon after a long and terrible duel, Brabo cut off the giant’s own hand and threw it into the river Scheldt, unwittingly giving the town its name: the Dutch for ‘hand-throw’ is hand werpen. What better way for Fernando to name his literary typeface than after the hero of Antwerp’s oldest tale? The garalde factor FS Brabo is not a revival, but a very much a contemporary, personal interpretation of a garalde – a class of typeface originating in the 16th century that includes Bembo, Garamond and Plantin, with characteristically rounded serifs and moderate contrast between strokes. Brabo’s ‘ct’ and ‘st’ ligatures, upper-case italic swashes and contextual ending ligatures – ‘as’, ‘is’, ‘us’ – all preserve the beauty and character of traditional typefaces, but its serifs are chunkier than a garalde. Their sharp cuts and squared edges give them a crispness at text sizes, helping to bring a beautifully bookish personality to hardworking modern applications. A workhorse with pedigree It may give the appearance of a simple, four-weight typeface, but FS Brabo has hidden depths beneath its simplicity and beauty. OpenType features such as cap italic swashes, contextual ending swashes – programmed only to appear at the end of words – and stylistic alternatives make this a complete and well-equipped typeface. Comprehensive testing was carried out at text and display sizes, too, to prevent counters from filling in. All of which makes FS Brabo a very modern take on a traditional workhorse serif typeface: colourful and versatile enough to adorn not just editorial projects but also signage, advertising and logotypes.

Gérard Mariscalchi is a self-made designer. Born in Southern France of a Spanish mother and an Italian father, he has worked as a mechanic, salesman, pilot, college teacher – even a poet (with poetry being the worst-paying of these professions, he reports.) “Throughout all this, the backbone of my career has always been design,” Mariscalchi says. “I’ve been drawing since I was five, but it wasn’t until I was twenty-four that I learned that my hobby could also help me earn a living.” It was about this same time that Mariscalchi fell in love with type. He studied the designs of masters like Excoffon, Usherwood and Frutiger, as well as the work of calligraphers and type designers such as Plantin, Cochin and Dürer. With such an eclectic background, it’s no surprise that Mariscalchi’s typeface designs are inspired by many sources. Baylac and Evita reflect the style of the art nouveau and art deco periods, while Marnie was created as an homage to the great Lithuanian calligrapher Villu Toots. However, the touch of French elegance and distinction Mariscalchi brings to his work is all his own. Baylac Who says thirteen is an unlucky number? Three capitals and ten lowercase letters from a poster by L. Baylac, a relatively obscure Art Nouveau designer, served as the foundation for this typeface. The finished design has lush curves that give the face drama without diminishing its versatility. On the practical side, Baylac’s condensed proportions make it perfect for those situations where there’s a lot to say and not much room in which to say it Evita Mariscalchi based the design of Evita on hand lettering he found in a restaurant menu, and considers this typeface one of his most difficult design challenges. “The main problem was to render the big weight difference between the thin and the thick strokes without creating printing problems at small point sizes,” he says. Unlike most scripts, Evita is upright, with the design characteristics of a serif typeface. Mariscalchi named the face for a close friend. The end result is a charming design that is light, airy, and slightly sassy. Marnie Based on Art Nouveau calligraphic lettering, Marnie is elegant, inviting, and absolutely charming. Mariscalchi paid special attention to letter shapes and proportions to guarantee high levels of character legibility. He also kept weight transition in character strokes to modest levels, enabling the face to be used at relatively small sizes – an unusual asset for a formal script. Marnie’s capital letters are expansive designs with flowing swash strokes that wrap affectionately around adjoining lowercase letters. The design easily captures the spontaneous qualities of hand-rendered brush lettering.

About SFT Sushka SFT Sushka is a narrow headline typeface that will look particularly good on the packaging of something delicious. 10 different widths and a variable font make it possible to fit the font into various limited spaces. Soft shapes and rounded notches make SFT Sushka cozy, friendly, and appetizing. But if you need a more concise and readable version, the Flat Subfamily without notches is available for you. The family forms a gradient from very narrow and quirky to wider, softer, and more fluffy styles. Therefore, the variation is not just in width and thickness, but in the overall mood as well. You can use the variable font without any concerns about unexpected intersections in the letters! Its structure is no different from static fonts. And last but not least, SFT Sushka allows for a very tight line spacing even in languages with diacritics! SFT Sushka has wide language support: 200+ Latin and 60+ Cyrillic languages. Language support Latin: Abenaki, Afaan-Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Amis, Anuta, Aragonese, Aranese-Aromanian, Arrernte, Arvanitic (Latin), Asturian, Atayal, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Bashkir-(Latin), Basque, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bislama, Bosnian, Breton, Cape-Verdean-Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Chickasaw, Cimbrian, Cofán, Cornish, Corsican, Creek, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Delaware, Dholuo, Drehu, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, Folkspraak, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Gikuyu, Gooniyandi, Greenlandic (Kalaallisut), Guadeloupean-Creole, Gwich’in, Haitian-Creole, Hän, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hopi, Hotcąk (Latin), Hungarian, Icelandic, Ido, Igbo, Ilocano, Indonesian, Interglossa, Interlingua, Irish, Istro-Romanian, Italian, Jamaican, Javanese-(Latin), Jèrriais, Kaingang, Kala-Lagaw-Ya, Kapampangan (Latin), Kaqchikel, Karakalpak-(Latin), Karelian (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kiribati, Kirundi, Klingon, Kurdish-(Latin), Ladinlatinlatino-sine-Flexione, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lojban, Lombard, Low-Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Māori, Marquesan, Megleno-Romanian, Meriam-Mir, Mirandese, Mohawk, Moldovan, Montagnais, Montenegrin, Murrinh-Patha, Nagamese-Creole, Nahuatl, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Ngiyambaa, Niuean, Noongar, Norwegian, Novial, Occidental, Occitan, Onĕipŏt, Oshiwambo, Ossetian (Latin), Palauan, Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Potawatomi, Q’eqchi’, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Rotokas, Sami-(Inari-Sami), Sami (Lule-Sami), Sami (Northern-Sami), Sami (Southern-Sami), Samoan, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish-Gaelic, Serbian-(Latin), Seri, Seychellois-Creole, Shawnee, Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Slovio-(Latin), Somali, Sorbian (Lower-Sorbian), Sorbian (Upper-Sorbian), Sotho (Northern), Sotho-(Southern), Spanish, Sranan, Sundanese (Latin), Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tok-Pisin, Tokelauan, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen-(Latin), Tuvaluan, Tzotzil, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Volapük, Võro, Wallisian, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Warlpiri, Wayuu, Welsh, Wik-Mungkan, Wiradjuri, Wolof, Xavante, Xhosa, Yapese, Yindjibarndi, Zapotec, Zarma, Zazaki, Zulu, Zuni. Cyrillic: Adyghe, Akhvakh, Aleut (Cyrillic), Altaic, Andi, Archi, Avar, Bashkir, Belarusian (Cyrillic), Besermyan, Bosnian (Cyrillic), Bulgarian (Cyrillic), Buryat, Chechen (Cyrillic), Chukchi, Chulym, Chuvash, Dargwa, Dungan, Enets, Even (Lamut), Gagauz, Godoberi, Ingush, Kabardino-Cherkess, Karaim, Karakalpak, Karata (Karata-Tukita), Karelian, Kazakh (Cyrillic), Ket, Kildin Sámi, Kirghiz, Komi-Zyrian, Koryak, Kumyk, Lak, Lezgian, Macedonian, Moldavian (Cyrillic), Mongolian, Mordvin-moksha, Nanai, Nganasan, Oroch, Ossetian, Russian, Rusyn, Saami, Serbian (Cyrillic), Soyot-Tsaatan, Tabasaran, Tadzhik, Tatar Volgaic, Tindi, Touva, Tsez, Turkmen (Cyrillic), Udege, Udmurt, Uighur (Cyrillic), Ukrainian, Ulch, Uzbek (Cyrillic), Veps, Yukagir.

I love geometric sans serifs, their crispness and rationality. Le Havre taps into this style, but for a while, I've wanted to create a font recalling the printed Futura of the 1940s, which seems to have an elusive quality all its own. After seeing an old manual on a World War II ship, I developed a plan for "Le Havre Metal" but chose to shelve the project due to Le Havre's small x-height. That's where Steagal comes in. When Robbie de Villiers and I began the Chatype project in early 2012 (a project which led one publication to label me the Edward Johnston of Chattanooga!), we started closely studying the vernacular lettering of Chattanooga. During that time, I also visited Switzerland, where I saw how designers were using a new, handmade aesthetic with a geometric base. I was motivated to make a new face combining some of these same influences. The primary inspiration for the new design came from the hand-lettering of sign painters in the United States, circa 1930s through 1950s. My Chatype research turned up a poster from the Tennessee Valley Authority in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which exhibited a number of quirks from the unique hand and style of one of these sign artists. Completing the first draft of Steagal, however, I found that the face appeared somewhat European in character. I turned then to the work of Morris Fuller Benton for a distinctly American take and discovered a number of features that would help define Steagal as a "1930s American" vernacular typeface--features I later learned also inspired Morris Fuller Benton's Eagle. The overall development of Steagal was surprisingly difficult, knowing when to deliberately distort optical artifacts and when to keep them in place. Part of type design is correcting optical illusions, and I found myself absentmindedly adjusting the optical effects. In the end, though, I was able to draw inspiration from period signs, inscriptions, period posters, and architecture while retaining just enough of the naive sensibility. Steagal has softened edges, which simulate brush strokes and retain the feeling of the human hand. The standard version has unique quirks that are not too intrusive. Overshoots have almost been eliminated, and joins have minimal corrections. The rounded forms are mathematically perfect, geometric figures without optical corrections. As a variation to the standard, the “Rough” version stands as the "bad signpainter" version with plenty of character. Steagal Regular comes in five weights and is packed with OpenType features. Steagal includes three Art Deco Alternate sets, optically compensated rounded forms, a monospaced variant, and numerous other features. In all, there are over 200 alternate characters. To see these features in action, please see the informative .pdf brochure. OpenType capable applications such as Quark or the Adobe Creative suite can take full advantage of the automatically replacing ligatures and alternates. Steagal also includes support for all Western European languages. Steagal is a great way to subtly draw attention to your work. Its unique quirks grab the eye with a authority that few typefaces possess. Embrace its vernacular, hand-brushed look, and see what this geometric sans serif can do for you.

Out of a lifelong inner struggle, Philip Bouwsma unleashes a masterpiece that reconciles classic calligraphy with type in a way never before attempted. Maestro takes its cue from the Italian chancery cursive of the early sixteenth century. By this time type ruled the publishing world, but official court documents were still presented in calligraphy, in a new formal style of the high Renaissance that was integrated with Roman letters and matched the refined order of type. The copybooks of Arrighi and others, printed from engraved wood blocks, spread the Italian cancellaresca across Europe, but the medium was too clumsy and the size too small to show what was really happening in the stroke. Arrighi and others also made metal fonts that pushed type in the direction of calligraphy, but again the medium did not support the superb artistry of these masters or sustain the vitality in their work. As the elegant sensitive moving stroke of the broad pen was reduced to a static outline, the human quality, the variety and the excitement of a living act were lost. Because the high level of skill could not be reproduced, the broad pen was largely replaced by the pointed tool. The modern italic handwriting revival is based on a simplified model and does not approach the level of this formal calligraphy with its relationship to the Roman forms. Maestro is the font that Arrighi and his colleagues would have made if they had had digital technology. Like the calligraphic system of the papal chancery on which it is modelled, it was not drawn as a single finished alphabet, but evolved from a confluence of script and Roman; the script is formalized by the Roman to stand proudly in a world of type. Maestro came together on screen over the course of several years, through many versions ranging widely in style, formality, width, slant, weight and other parameters. On one end of the spectrum, looking back to tradition it embodies the formal harmony of the Roman capitals and the minuscule which became the lower case. On the other it is a flowing script letter drawing on the spirit of later pointed pen and engravers scripts. As its original designers intended, it works with simple Roman capitals and serifs or swash capitals and baroque flourishes. The broad pen supplies weight and substance to the stroke which carries energy through tension in balanced s-curves. Above all it is meant to convey the life and motion of formal calligraphy as a worthy counterbalance to the stolid gravity of metal type. The Maestro family consists of forty fonts distributed over two weights. The OpenType version compresses the family considerably down to two fonts, regular and bold, each containing the entire character set of twenty fonts, for a total of more than 3350 characters per font. These include a wide variety of stylistic alternates, ligatures, beginning and ending letters, flourishes, borders, rules, and other extras. The Pro version also includes extended linguistic support for Latin-based scripts (Western, Central and Eastern European, Baltic, Turkish, Welsh/Celtic, Maltese) as well as Greek. For more thoughts on Maestro, its background and character sets, please read the PDF accompanying the family.

Impressed by the quality of the Aachen typeface that was originally designed for Letraset in 1969 and extended to include Aachen Medium in 1977, Jim Wasco of Monotype Imaging has extended this robust display design to create an entire family. Derived from the serif-accented Egyptienne fonts dating to the early 20th century, Aachen has serifs that are very solid but considerably shorter than those of its precursor. The incorporated geometrical elements, such as right angles and straight lines, provide the slender letters of Aachen with a slightly technological, stencil-like quality. Despite this, the effect of Aachen is by no means static; its dynamism means that this typeface, originally designed for use in headlines, has come to be used with particular frequency in sport- and fitness-related contexts. Jim Wasco, for many years a type designer at Monotype Imaging, recognized the potential of Aachen and decided to extend the typeface to create an entire typeface family. He appropriated the existing Aachen Bold in unchanged form and first created the less heavy cuts, Thin and Regular. Wasco admits that he found designing the forms for Thin a particular challenge. It took him several attempts before he was able to achieve consistency within the glyphs for Thin and, at the same time, retain sufficient affinity with the original Aachen Bold. But he finally managed to adapt the short serifs and the condensed and slightly geometrical quality of the letters to the needs of Thin. The weights Light, Book, Medium and Semibold were generated by means of interpolation. Supplemented by Extralight and Extrabold, the new Neue Aachen can now boast a total of nine different weights. Wasco initially relied on his predilection for genuine cursives in his designs for the Italic cuts. But it became apparent with these first trial runs that the soft curves of cursives did not suit Aachen and led to the loss of too much of its original character. Wasco thus decided to compromise by using both inclined and cursive letters. Neue Aachen Italic is somewhat narrower than its upright counterparts; the lower case 'a' has a closed form while the 'f' has been given a descender, but the letters have otherwise not been given additional adornments. The range of glyphs available for Neue Aachen has been significantly extended, so that the typeface can now be used to set texts not only in Western but also Central European languages. Wasco has also added a double-counter lowercase 'g' while relying on the availability of alternative letters in the format sets for the enhancement of the legibility of Neue Aachen when used to set texts. The seven new weights and completely new Italic variants have enormously increased the potential applications of Aachen and the range of creative options for the designer. While the Bold weights have proved their worth as display fonts, the new Book and Regular cuts are ideal for setting text. And the subtlety of Ultra Light will provide your projects with a quite unique flair. The new possibilities and opportunities in terms of design and applications that Neue Aachen offers you are not restricted to print production; you can also create internet pages thanks to its availability as a web font.