Jengotan is a rapid script, hand-painted with a brush to give a great contrast between thick and thin curves. It is drawn, scanned and vectorized from paper to screen, with the intent of being an authentic brush typeface, leaving the texture and imperfections the way they are, resulting in a vivid style for projects that requires dynamic handwriting. Use [ ] { } < > anywhere in a word to create a swash. Example: Jeng{otan In addition to the Jengotan font, also included is the Upright variation. The lettering is suitable for quotes, logos, watermarks on photography, signatures, branding, advertisement, album covers, business cards, clothing, magazines, posters, and more! It is a font of very extensive lingual support, covering all European Latin scripts. The font contains all characters you'll ever need, including all punctuation and numbers.

Du is a self hommage to Uncertain Felttip. Uncertain, made in 2008, is a typeface which reproduced faithfully the style in which I am writing on copy paper, usually using the felt-tip pen. This time, I wrote the new family by the same method but using the tablet PC and the touch pen. Although, as for some characters, Uncertain differs in a form, it is the result of reflecting my hand writing. I wrote all the characters. If it is original, all the characters diverted and composed, for example, characters, such as Aacute and Agrave, are written. Different specification from Uncertain is family composition. Although Uncertain had only 3 weight, 7 weight were designed for Du. This way a user can choose his favorite weight because the variation of weights increased.

JUST BE is a playful brush script. Perfect for titles, headings and logotypes for blogs, ads, quote prints, home decor, book title, invitation, birthday, custom product, lifestyle imagery (like quotes and stuff). Character set contains Eastern and Western European Latin accented letters. For additional customisations (for logotypes for example) please email me at contact@rolandhuse.com You MAY NOT sell this font or claim them as your own. You MAY NOT edit or rename this font. You MAY NOT redistribute this font. Thank you I hope you like this font & good luck with your project! Roland Instagram: @rolandhusedesign Background images of "Just Be" main poster by Annie Spratt from unsplash https://unsplash.com/@anniespratt "Your best moments in life are ahead" by Helena Hertz https://unsplash.com/@imperiumnordique paper bag mock up by Graphic Burger https://graphicburger.com"

Meringue, a transitional serif face, is designed specially for modern glossy magazines. It is ideal for fashion photography, fashion publications and mag covers, and can be used for headings and captions, as well as for body copy. The italic version, with its wave-like vertical strokes, creates yet more stylishly expressive feel. Text set in Meringue has an elegant weightless look, and the strongest effect can be achieved with high-quality printing. The typeface includes old style figures, ligatures, and alternative characters that allow creating truly versatile design by means of typography. Designers may also find Meringue perfect for beautiful presentations, invitations and other special occasion papers. Meringue was designed during the Type and Typography course at the British Higher School of Art and Design, supervised by Ilya Ruderman.

When Baka and Baka Too did very well commercially (Baka was named the Best Cursive Rough Script in 2005), I shied away from doing rough, handwritten scripts in fear as being seen as a one-trick-pony. A few years have passed and some early sumi-e brush ‘doodles’ kept appealing to me. I initially thought this new font would just fall under the Baka mantle and just become a new sibling, but as brush hit paper over and over again, the letters took on a different personality from Baka. This new font was turning out to be far more expressive, smooth and rough, tasty but sticky. This dichotomy demanded a new name. The rough and smooth texture suggested the name Fugu—oddly delicate while rough and functional.

Kapelka New is a soft and friendly display face based on the principles of writing with a soft pointed brush. Kapelka is suitable for packaging design, children's books headlines and any other domestic and informal purposes. The typeface was designed by Zakhar Yaschin and released by ParaType in 2015. Inspired by the sweetie paper and soft pointed brush writing Zahar Yaschin designed the first version of Kapelka in 2001. It wasn’t on the shelf all these years and even served some time as a corporate identity of “Domashniy” TV channel. But with the benefit of hindsight the author decided to improve, modernize and extend Kapelka. The result was even better than you would expect. The font became even more soft and gentle and also gained some inward nobility due to more evident calligraphic base.

Waba Pronounced ‘Vah-bah’, is a font family that I designed. The name comes from a historical variation on the Estonian word ‘vaba’ – meaning ‘free’, or 'at liberty'. Back in 2017 I visited the Estonian Print & Paper Museum in Tartu to see its great collection of type (well worth a visit!). While I was there I saw some big woodcut blocks of Reklameschrift Herold - a super Art Nouveau/Jugendstil style display font. The Print & Paper Museum's collection covers both Latin and Cyrillic faces and as a foreigner in these parts I'm kind of fascinated by the exoticism of Cyrillic. How it is different but the same to the Latin letters I take for granted (as a humble Englander – no excuses). Not to mention, Jugendstil with its imitation of natural form, reverse-weights and looping-delicious curves (like you've left the window open all summer and the garden plants are climbing in). This mix of Jugendstil, Cyrillic letters and the beautiful historical border town of Tartu inspired me to start drawing Waba. Trimming the serifs from Herold, simplifying those angles and expanding the category of weights, then taking look at the magical logic of Berthold Block and doing a few things that just seemed right at the time – Waba is a bit of love letter to Estonia, the Baltics and the visual history of Eastern Europe. Waba Monogram Waba also contains a monogram face, which allows you to create any monogramming latin and cyrillic. Simply type out your 2-3-4 characters in Waba Monogram, making sure Contextual Alternates is turned on them voila! Monograms can be customised manually using the OpenType select-pop-up in Adobe. Also included are a few Discretionary Ligatures for Mc, De, Von etc. Monograms work best when Contextual Alternates is turned on.

Introducing Gomoku—the chunkiest, sweetest, most playful paper cut-out typeface you’ll ever lay your eyes on! With its bold and thick slab serifs, this typeface is sure to make a statement and add a touch of whimsy to any design. Gomoku’s foreground font is the star of the show, featuring a thick and chunky design that demands attention. But why stop there? Gomoku’s optional background layer adds a whole new level of depth and texture to your typography, making it stand out from the crowd. Whether you’re designing posters, greeting cards, or social media graphics, Gomoku is the perfect font choice to add a quirky and playful touch to your project. So why settle for boring, basic fonts when you can have Gomoku’s delightful paper cut-out design? Get your hands on Gomoku today and start creating bold and beautiful designs that are sure to make a lasting impression. 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.

Lycia (Lycian: 𐊗𐊕𐊐𐊎𐊆𐊖 Trm̃mis; Greek: Λυκία, Lykia; Turkish: Likya) was a geopolitical region in Anatolia in what are now the provinces of Antalya and Muğla on the southern coast of Turkey, bordering the Mediterranean Sea, and Burdur Province inland. Known to history since the records of ancient Egypt and the Hittite Empire in the Late Bronze Age, it was populated by speakers of the Luwian language group. Written records began to be inscribed in stone in the Lycian language (a later form of Luwian) after Lycia's involuntary incorporation into the Achaemenid Empire in the Iron Age. At that time (546 BC) the Luwian speakers were decimated, and Lycia received an influx of Persian speakers. Ancient sources seem to indicate that an older name of the region was Alope (Ancient Greek: Ἀλόπη, Alópē). Lycia fought for the Persians in the Persian Wars, but on the defeat of the Achaemenid Empire by the Greeks, it became intermittently a free agent. After a brief membership in the Athenian Empire, it seceded and became independent (its treaty with Athens had omitted the usual non-secession clause), was under the Persians again, revolted again, was conquered by Mausolus of Caria, returned to the Persians, and finally fell under Macedonian hegemony upon the defeat of the Persians by Alexander the Great. Due to the influx of Greek speakers and the sparsity of the remaining Lycian speakers, Lycia was rapidly Hellenized under the Macedonians, and the Lycian language disappeared from inscriptions and coinage.

FS Rosa is a free-spirited and optimistic serif typeface – reminiscent of those used on fanzines, film sequences and book covers of the 1970s, such as Cooper and Windsor, it has a laid-back nature with a touch of rebellion. It also reminds of type used in colourful protest graphics by nun-turned-designer Corita Kent, and its personality is akin with brands like Whole Foods - positive rather than preachy. While unconventional, it’s sensible enough to work perfectly for socially conscious brands, magazines, websites and campaigns that want a fairer and more responsible world. Hand-drawn digitally, FS Rosa is warm and open-minded – its irregular letterforms are rounded, with soft terminals, a large x-height and wide apertures. But it is also quirky and eclectic, with irregular shapes – its short ascenders and descenders have slanted serifs, its uppercase forms have unusually low crossbars and the letters are filled with oddities and surprises. The typeface looks to stand out against a sea of homogenous, geometric sans serifs, and celebrates beauty through imperfection. It comes in five weights of Thin, Light, Regular, Bold and Black. The heavier weights make an impact and are great for loud, headline statements. The Regular weight is functional, balanced and robust for text, and the lighter weights have an elegance and contemporary beauty. FS Rosa is eclectic yet with its soft roundness, also positive and progressive. Its name, inspired by the phrase “rose-tinted glasses”, reflects its optimism.

The island of Fuerteventura is more known for its white sand beaches and windsurf-friendly constant winds than for its typographic marvels. Still, it's on the walls of a ballroom next to its white-sand beaches that Debora Manetti found the hand-painted letterforms that she took as inspiration for her typeface Sala de Fiestas. The resulting font was a condensed sans serif full of curious details and a jumpy latino vibe that many years after still keeps its freshness and vernacular charme. Francesco Canovaro took the original typeface as a starting point for a grand tour into sign-painter aesthetics, developing a reboot of the original into a new type family: Salad. While being faithful to the original proportions and feeling, Salad provides extreme versatility through its five-weights range, its extended charset and its set of Open Type features including stylistic sets, alternates, positional numerals, small capitals and case sensitive forms. While the roman family with its italic counterpart provide a good workhorse tool for informal branding, packaging and editorial projects, the interlocking and the inline weights add additional possibilities for display purposes. This is enriched by the inclusion in the typeface of a set hand-drawn decorative dingbats that further complement the sign painting vibe of the family. All Zetafonts expertise in handmade lettering, typographic design and water sports has been put to test to assure Salad is the best typographical alternative to a a trip to Canary Islands!

Montarsi is a typeface designed by Jeremy Dooley, inspired by Arabic calligraphy and contemporary design trends. The letters are fluid and graceful, inspired by the curves and swirls of Arabic script. Montarsi is a bold, contemporary calligraphic face with broad strokes and high contrast. It has a variety of styles and weights to give you an extensive range of design options. This font family, which includes eight weights, is ideal for producing brief texts for editorial, fashion, branding, magazine, television, window displays, and other media applications. Small caps, old-style figures, and width variations are also included. It's ideal for writing brief sentences because of the increased x-height. Montarsi is a classic spirit reinvented in a modern language, influenced by the delicate curves of letters and the way ink glides across paper. We especially thank Lucas Azevedo and ikern.

Introducing Pinafore Complete, a broad, brush-style display font in four styles. Pinafore comes with upright and oblique styles as well as paper cut versions of each. It includes 363 glyphs such as small caps (see note below for more on this), multilingual support (including multiple currency symbols), an awesome ampersand, math symbols, and more. A note about small caps: There are TWO ways to access the small caps in this font family. For OpenType-savvy programs such as Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign, these can be accessed from within the main font files using the character panel or the glyphs panel. For programs that do not access these OpenType features, I have also included small-caps-specific font files. In these files, the regular caps are accessed by typing capital letters and the small caps are accessed by typing lowercase letters.

It all started with making of a simple all-caps font. I drew the whole alphabet, numbers all else needed - but something wasn't quite right...the lettershapes were fine, but quite boring. Then I took a drastic decision: I started all over again ... meaning, I printed the whole thing, messed it up using a wet cloth and wrinkled the paper - then scanned it all again, and imported all the graphics yet again. A lot of work, yes - but personally I think it was worth it! But anyway, that's the story of how Primitivus was made ... well, almost, but not quite ... but that's another story! Use Primitivus for anything that needs that special kind of look were handdrawn letters meets grunge! Play around with the 4 different versions of each letter to make your text look even more random and natural!

Tipperary was designed by Steve Matteson and named for a favorite 'single track' bike trail, Tipperary is a monoline Humanist Sans Serif typeface. The clear, open, letter forms curve abruptly in an almost squarish geometry much like the sharp turns on the Tipperary trail. The clear, austere forms offer exceptional legibility for both interface designs and extended reading. Small size package labels and crisp branding programs benefit from Tipperary's emphasis on clean, readable design. eText typefaces are designed to meet the challenges of extended reading in digital environments such as mobile devices or desktop screens. Their forerunners are among the world's most popular and important book typefaces for print media. These classic designs were reinterpreted to conform to technological constraints of LCD and e-Paper while retaining the properties of proportion and form which made them favorites for print.

Sassafrassy™ is a fun hand-calligraphy font family that includes 2 font styles (Simple & Swash), Map Things & a Pattern set to help you create beautiful custom designs. Written using a flexible steel nib & ink on paper. The Simple version includes an extensive character set designed for ease of use. The Swash version has all of the swash characters and gives the font a different stylistic feel. The Pro version contains all characters from both of these two fonts, over 1000 glyphs in total. Also included in this family is a fun “Map Things” set so you can create your own hand-drawn maps & a Free Pattern Set (some of which were used to create the above banners). Map Things & Patterns aren't recommended for use in Word. Language support includes your standard characters plus Eastern European & Baltic character sets. Happy creating!

We produce original printing press letter fonts, for example from the journal Southern Literary Messenger (circa 1830 - 1870). The only one in the world. What makes our fonts so attractive to the eye, are the myriad imperfections. It's not an approximation to the printing-press letters--- these are the actual letters, complete with all their manifold differences. If you look closely you will notice that the letter 'e' say, each time it is printed, is slightly different. These differences arise from the mechanical action of the inked-wooden press on the paper, and cannot be faked by artificial means. The eye subconsciously picks up this text as the actual printing press letters. Edgar Allan Poe published many of his great works in the Southern Literary Messenger, as did many other great nineteenth century writers, ie. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne &c.

From time to time at Tipo Pèpel we like to play like children and get our hands dirty with whatever implement that can be used to mark or draw on the walls, even if the grown-ups don’t like it. And this is more or less what happened with “Trepa” (catalan for “stencil”), a typeface with a fresh and uninhibited appearance, inspired by commercial signs and the 1950’s French art movement “Graphie Latine”. Far removed from the straight lines of vector art, “Trepa” has the necessary roughness to make this class of font stand out and what’s more it has an extensive range of latin characters covering more than 200 languages, and a pair of complementary texture fonts which further multiply its creative possibilities. If you want to protest with elegance, “Trepa” is your best choice.

Mystical Woods is a script and caps font duo. I went back to the basics for this one -- ink and a brush on paper. I cleaned up the letters enough so that there are no jagged edges, but left enough of the character to keep that inky look -- those are the Rough fonts. Then I went back through again and cleaned the heck out of them, making every line and curve smooth for our cut-crafting friends -- those are the Smooth fonts. Since these two fonts were written together with the same tools and style, you can also mix the script letters in with the caps letters! Each font comes with a full set of standard characters and punctuation, as well as over 300 extended Latin characters for language support. And the script fonts also have 45 double-letter ligatures!

Mayhome Script is a beautiful and classy script based on manual calligraphy ink on a paper. This fnt has many swashes that allows you to create beautiful lettering instantly. it has many stylistic set alternates that you can choose from. The character of this typeface is bouncy with natural stroke which is make it looks naturally handwritten. This font perfectly made to be applied especially in logo, and the other various formal forms such as invitations, labels, logos, magazines, books, greeting / wedding cards, packaging, fashion, make up, stationery, novels, labels or any type of advertising purpose. Features : uppercase & lowercase numbers and punctuation multilingual ligatures alternates swashes PUA encoded We highly recommend using a program that supports OpenType features and Glyphs panels like many of Adobe apps and Corel Draw, so you can see and access all Glyph variations.

Poliphilus is a facsimile of the text of the 'Hypnerotomachia Poliphili', after which it is named, published by Aldus Manutius in Venice in 1499, using a type that had been cut by Francesco Griffo. As a design, Poliphilus is related to Bembo, but whereas Bembo was redrawn, with the intention of making a new face based on an old design, Poliphilus is an exact copy of fifteenth century printing on hand made paper. So exact in fact that even the original ink spread is reproduced. This may not seem like a very sound idea for a typeface, but the letterforms are good and the design is functionally successful. Blado, the italic for use with Poliphilus, was used by Antonio Blado in 1539, and designed by the calligrapher Ludovico degli Arrighi. The Poliphilus type is used mainly for book and text work."

Trailmade is a rugged and stylish brush font with regular, italic, and extras styles. Explore an adventurous path with this typeface that ventures a little outside the typical brush script genre but still carries echoes of it. The upright design of the regular style has a confident appearance, while the italic style gives a little more of a signature look. Hand-lettered with a brush pen on paper, Trailmade includes swash characters, automatic double-letter ligatures, and a complete second set of lowercase stylistic alternates to switch in and out for a more authentic feel. There is also a matching Extras font featuring a variety of lines and dingbats that will complement your typography. All alternates, swashes, and ligatures are PUA-encoded for more accessibility in a variety of programs. This font has extensive Latin language support for Western, Central, and Eastern European.

All Ages is a true punk rock font. It has the same look and feel that you see wrapped around a light post telling you where the next show of your favorite band will be. All Ages will work with any of your headline, in your face, stylized design needs and it looks great BIG or small! For a customized look to your works, switch between uppercase and lowercase for a change of grunge to the letters, italics are also available. You can also use All Ages in layers if your background is a little too busy by using All Ages Letters on top of the All Ages Ripped Paper, you can even use All Ages Letters on it’s own for an alternate look. Each font includes a character set large enough to support you international punkers with multilingual characters.

Mimeograph Lettering JNL is based on one of the numerous plastic lettering templates once manufactured by the A.B. Dick Company of Chicago and is available in both regular and oblique versions. The mimeograph utilized a porous drum which inked the backside of a waxed stencil sheet. Unlike traditional stencils which have cut out areas that are directly inked or painted, a mimeo stencil has the area to be printed scratched away by removing the wax coating with a stylus. The resulting image allows the ink from the drum to seep through the sheet and transfer to the blank paper. As with a companion font (Mimeograph Template JNL), the character shapes follow the routed letters of the template, complete with rounded terminals. A previous font release [designed with flat terminals and some alternate characters] is available as Interoffice Memo JNL.

Introducing the new font Baskuline. Baskuline font is a HanwrittenHandbrush handwriting on paper with a coarse type brush, to produce a consistent texture. Baskuline also has ligature which is very suitable if you don't really like lowercase letters and want to change some letters with available ligature letters. and available lowercase alternatives that you can change according to your taste. Baskuline suitable for various projects such as stationery invitations, social media, logos, weddings, branding, graphic design with the addition of several binders and swashes. and can be combined with various types of serif fonts to perfect the project you want to work on. We hope you enjoy the font, please feel free to comment if you have any thoughts or feedback. Or simply send me a PM or email me at zeenesia@gmail.com. Thanks for purchasing and have fun!

Marla Griselda is a Beautiful and classy script based on manual calligraphy ink on a paper. This fnt has many swashes that allows you to create beautiful lettering instantly. it has many stylistic set alternates that you can choose from. The character of this typeface is bouncy with natural stroke which is make it looks naturally handwritten. This font perfectly made to be applied especially in logo, and the other various formal forms such as invitations, labels, logos, magazines, books, greeting / wedding cards, packaging, fashion, make up, stationery, novels, labels or any type of advertising purpose. Features : uppercase & lowercase numbers and punctuation multilingual ligatures alternates swashes PUA encoded We highly recommend using a program that supports OpenType features and Glyphs panels like many of Adobe apps and Corel Draw, so you can see and access all Glyph variations.

Alius is something else. Experimental shapes combined with traditional ones result in an extremely legible typeface that—because of its economically spaced characters—works extraordinarily well for copy texts as well as big striking headings. Alius has been created with great attention to detail which is particularly noticeable in smaller sizes where proportions and shapes remain intact. The Typeface includes stylistic alternates that provide the designer with endless possibilities for combinations and variations. Alius contains PS-Hinting and is therefore as legible on screen as it is on paper. The typeface comes with powerful OpenType features that will satisfy even the most demanding of designers. With more than 680 Glyphs and a coverage of over 130 languages, Alius is as versatile as it is beautiful. The development of the typeface started in the summer and concluded in the fall of 2021.

The design of VLNL Mais started out as a thought experiment – "How would it look if you dressed up FuturaBlack in LatinWide serifs?” DBXL drew up the first sketches on graph paper in 2014. Although the concept looked promising enough, it ended up dormant in a desktop folder. To be resurfaced recently when covid-19 started spreading and we were asked to all stay home. The final design ended up with a distinct latino flavour due to the long spikey serifs. They look like tortilla chips. And as maize is the main ingredient in many South-American and specifically Mexican dishes – tortillas, burritos, nachos, tamales, tacos – a name was quickly found. VLNL Mais was designed by DBXL, and can be used for logos, headlines, flyers or posters (and not just for Mexican restaurants). It can be found in the VetteLetters vegetable section.

Sunwind is not really made to write long copy. It is a font for shopsigns and short sentences that need that hot, sunny and windy touch. And that is how I got around to designing it: I saw some letters on a shopsign in Cannes when driving into town. I shouted at my son Julius: "Quick take a picture of that sign, the blue one." That's what he did, only he used the macro setting, so I had a very small sign but lots of nice background. Anyway I got the basic idea! Then I made a lot of sketches and this is what came out. I added a smallcaps set and I also made some initials as a rough version, so they look like written with a brush on heavygrain paper. Swinging that brush is yours truly Gert Wiescher

Kappa is a modern sans serif with humanistic and geometric features. Its structure is slightly narrow to fit in a greater range of platforms (moreover if you print it, you may save a lot of paper), and its height is higher allowing a great legibility in small sizes. This family is composed with the display version and the text version providing a broad spectrum of solutions, making this family easier and friendlier to use. Designed with powerful OpenType features in mind. Each weight includes alternate characters, ligatures, fractions, special numbers, arrows, extended language support, small caps and many more… Perfectly suited for graphic design and any display / text use. The 36 fonts are part of the larger Kappa super family. Learn about upcoming releases, work in progress and get to know us better! On Instagram W Foundry On facebook W Foundry wtypefoundry.com

Dixplay, a typeface based on a pixel grid, is available in two weights: regular and black. Inspired by video game aesthetics of the 80s, was originally intended for display applications, but it works fine on paper as well. The font has been conceived in 20 px size allowing more freedom to manipulate it and making a big difference with other fonts of its kind, this difference it’s more evident in Dixplay Black. As a result, it’s optimized for screen use at 20 px and its multiples. Spacing is one of the most outstanding aspects of Dixplay. While pixel fonts doesn't have kerning pairs, Dixplay offers more than 300 manually done that fit perfectly to the grid. It is available in Open Type format and supports Western European Languages that uses the Latin alphabet. For more details see the PDF.

Before Bodoni, there was Didot. With the publication by Francois Ambroise Didot of Paris in 1784 of his prospectus for Tasso’s La Gerusalemme Liberata, the rococo typographical style of Fournier de Jeune was replaced with a spartan, neo-classical style that John Baskerville pioneered. The typeface Didot used for this work was of Didot’s own creation and is considered by both G. Dowding and P. Meggs to be the first modern face. Three years later, Bodoni of Parma is using a very similar face. Just as Bodoni’s typeface evolved over time, so did that of the Didot family. The eldest son of Francois Ambroise Didot, Pierre, ran the printing office; and Firmin ran the typefoundry. Pierre used the flattened, wove paper, again pioneered by Baskerville, to permit a more accurate impression and allow the use of more delicate letterforms. Firmin took full advantage of the improved paper by further refining the typeface introduced by his father. The printing of Racine’s Oeuvres in 1801 (seen in our gallery image #2) shows the symbiotic results of their efforts, especially in the marked increase in the sharpness of the serifs when compared to their owns works of only six years earlier. It has been suggested that one reason Bodoni achieved greater popularity than Didot is the thinner hairlines of Didot were more fragile when cast in metal type and thus more expensive for printers to use than Bodoni. This ceased to be a problem with the advent of phototypesetting, opening the door for a renewed interest in the work of the Didot family and especially that of Firmin Didot. Although further refinements in the Didot typeface were to come (notably the lower case ‘g’ shown in 1819), we have chosen 1801 as the nominal basis for our presentation of HiH Firmin Didot. We like the thick-thin circumflex that replaced the evenly-stroked version of 1795, possible only with the flatter wove paper. We like the unusual coat-hanger cedilla. We like the organic, leaf-like tail of the ‘Q.’ We like the strange, little number ‘2’ and the wonderfully assertive ‘4.’ And we like the distinctive and delightful awkwardness of the double-v (w). Please note that we have provided alternative versions of the upper and lower case w that are slightly more conventional than the original designs. Personally, I find the moderns (often called Didones) hard on the eyes in extended blocks of text. That does not stop me from enjoying their cold, crisp clarity. They represent the Age of Reason and the power of man’s intellect, while reflecting also its limitations. In the title pages set by Bodoni, Bulmer and Didot, I see the spare beauty of a winter landscape. That appeals to a New Englander like myself. Another aspect that appeals to me is setting a page in HiH Firmin Didot and watching people try to figure out what typeface it is. It looks a lot like Bodoni, but it isn't!

AwanZaman has a three-phase story, beginning with Dr Mamoun Sakkal’s two Arabic styles and culminating with Juliet Shen’s Latin extension. AwanZaman started as simply Awan, a commission for a modern, clean, monoline typeface for writing headlines and story titles in a forward-thinking Kuwaiti newspaper. Awan was based on the geometric forms of Kufic script, while in phase two, a second typeface (Zaman) was designed to add enough calligraphic Naskh details to make it easy to read in demanding newspaper settings. Together these two phases give the typeface a warm, familiar, and progressive look, as well as an explanatory two-part name — AwanZaman. Since most editorials use typical Naskh headline fonts with an exaggerated baseline, Awan’s rational forms immediately distinguish it as a modern and progressive voice in the crowded field of Arabic editorial typefaces. As the companion Arabic typeface, Zaman has the same basic proportions and forms as Awan, but with many cursive, energetic, and playful details. And since modern monoline fonts are increasingly being used to set extended texts, more features were borrowed from Naskh calligraphy to expand the typeface’s use from headlines into text setting. When using the AwanZaman Arabic family, Awan (geometric Kufic forms) is the starting point. To add the sweeping, energetic personality of Zaman (calligraphic Naskh forms), simply activate an alternate character through the option of 20 stylistic sets available in any OpenType-savvy software. The two typefaces function as one file — the AwanZaman Arabic family — allowing users to combine features from both designs to transform the appearance of text from geometric and formal to playful and informal. The third phase of AwanZaman’s development introduced a companion Latin typeface designed by Juliet Shen to fulfil the persistent need in the Arabic fonts market for modern and geometric bilingual type families. Due to the Arabic’s monolinear strokes, AwanZaman Latin was destined to be a sans serif with a tall x-height, larger counters, and corresponding stem thickness to harmonise with the Arabic’s overall text colour and page presence. But it needed much more. One of AwanZaman’s chief assets is making the two languages look on a par when typeset side by side. Arabic and English readers will have a different sense of what that entails, but this type family defers to the Arabic — graceful and artistic with a good mix of straight stems and curved forms. Latin in general doesn’t aesthetically flow the way Arabic does, yet the tone of the Latin needed to mirror both the Arabic’s more squarish curves and formal personality of Awan and the undulating and more playful shapes of Zaman without looking outlandish. That need was met by creating some novel Latin characters, which are accessed through four stylistic sets the same way as AwanZaman Arabic. The alternates are not just clever in the way they look and how they echo the Arabic aesthetic, but also in harmonising the disparate languages and serving designers well when needing a balanced, bilingual text face with a warm and lively voice. AwanZaman is a clever, seven-weight powerhouse that makes extensive use of OpenType’s stylistic sets (20 in the Arabic and four in the Latin) so writers and designers can make the most of everything from a single glyph in display sizes down to dense text in paragraphs. As AwanZaman Arabic has no italic, neither does the Latin; contextual distinction normally handled by italics is achieved by exploiting the family’s seven weights. AwanZaman’s intricate OpenType programming supports Persian and Urdu, with features such as the returning tail of Barri Yeh treated properly. From its inception in geometry to its melding of two worlds with novel forms, AwanZaman is a personal labor by designers Dr Mamoun Sakkal and Juliet Shen, and embodies the TypeTogether ideals of serving the global community with innovative and stylish typeface solutions. The complete AwanZaman Arabic and Latin families, along with our entire catalogue, have been optimised for today’s varied screen uses.