Iconic Conjuring memories of chunky typefaces from the late-60s and early-70s, and named after the world’s greatest footballer of that and probably any other era, FS Pele is one of a set of Fontsmith fonts designed specifically for headlines and other prominent applications. “We wanted to create fonts that could be integral to the design of posters, album covers and magazines,” says Jason Smith. Welcome to FS Pele, iconic, like its namesake (though, perhaps, a little less nimble). Big Pele, little Pele There was only one Pele. But there are two sizes of FS Pele. FS Pele One, with the finer counters and details, adds considerable weight and style at large sizes, especially in big block headlines on posters. FS Pele Two’s thicker “slots” make it a better choice for smaller-sized text. A load of blocks FS Pele began as an exercise by Phil Garnham in turning squares into legible letters, via the least means necessary. The idea extended his ideas about logo-making, and the search for a stamp-like brand mark that lends authority, stability and instant identification. “The thought that the type was a 2D/3D jigsaw of slotted, architectural pieces was almost an after-thought. I wanted to create a strong, stacking, block aesthetic for the most contemporary poster design. “At the time there were a lot of designers creating their own versions of the same thing but I wanted to take the blocker forms to the next step, and infer a more legible text without sacrificing the idea.”

Hand lettering found across the sheet music cover of 1931's "Bend Down, Sister" [from the Eddie Cantor film "Palmy Days"] covered a couple of varying Art Deco styles; both made with a round-tipped pen nib. Deco Pen JNL combines the best of both styles into one design that's available in both regular and oblique versions.

This is a curly, fun, playful handwriting font.

This font was created in honor of my husband for our 12th wedding anniversary. 14 years ago, I met this tall, skinny guy from Indiana in the lobby of a hotel in Hong Kong. We talked. The next day, we had lunch together. And that night we had dinner together. And the next day. And the next. We met just before my 19th birthday, and on my birthday he took me to the top of Victoria Peak, where we looked out over the city of Hong Kong- such a beautiful place to begin a lifetime of love! We spent 4 months together in Hong Kong, falling in love with each other and with the beautiful city we were privileged to call home for that short time. We married the next year. We've lived in Indiana, Texas, China, Kentucky, and Florida over those 12 years of marriage and have welcomed 2 daughters into our lives. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he completes my life in a way I didn't know was possible. And I know that I'm blessed beyond words to have a supportive, wonderful, encouraging husband who is also a loving, involved, caring dad to our daughters. This font is for you, Keith!

Adelphi is a geometric sans, redefined for the northern side of the English Channel. Typographic modernism was a late arrival in Britain — due partly to the Second World War and to the strong local type tradition. This delay provided for fruitful divergence, thus modernism was not adored in quite the same way as it had been in Germany and central Europe. It was instead rethought and repurposed against the backdrop of the bleak British weather and postwar social reform – a continental fashion statement reshaped into a more humanist variant. Likewise, when crafting Adelphi, Nick Job reimagined the constraints that defined the geometric sans as a genre. Whereas other typefaces seem overly bound by the rules, Adelphi feels relaxed and approachable. Elementary square and circular shapes are merely implied. A keen observer may notice that the uncomplicated letterforms occasionally reveal a subtle naïveté associated with early Grotesques. Brunel’s bridges and Harry Beck’s tube map spring to mind alongside the Bauhaus and Futura. But Adelphi is by no means nostalgic! It is a contemporary, comprehensive, and durable system with a pragmatic set of features. These include a wide array of weights, ‘uniwidth italics’, and variable extenders that go from tall and flat in Adelphi Text to short and sharp in Adelphi Display, with default Adelphi standing midway between these two extremes. You can set the extenders to your preference in the all-inclusive variable font or use one of the three static fonts that come packed together, priced as a single font. The pan-European support for Latin, Cyrillic and Greek scripts already makes for a vast character set, but Adelphi takes things a step further by including alternate glyphs to satisfy the DIN1450 legibility norm, a range of ordinals that can be used to create specialist compositions in all three scripts and two kinds of fractions and arrows. Play with the alternates or use it as-is. Either way, this understated beauty will carry you through.

Peridot is not just another typeface – it's a multifaceted sans serif type system crafted with passion and precision by Foundry5. Painstakingly developed through long hours and a keen focus on every minute detail, this typeface boasts a high-quality 10 weight family with matching italics in 6 widths, and the highly versatile variable format. Brimming with character, Peridot invites you to experiment with its various stylistic variants, allowing you to tailor the typographic tone to fit your creative vision perfectly. The diverse range of widths and styles in Peridot offers a dynamic typographic toolbox, ready to inspire and captivate even the most innovative designers. Peridot PE supports Cyrillic, Greek, and Latin and covers over 370 languages. It includes all required localised variants, tabular numerals and currencies, fractions, clever discretionary ligatures and many more features. Peridot performs in varied environments – from branding, display, corporate use, editorial, advertising, poster, web, screen usage etc. Think of any other use case as well, and Peridot will perform. Peridot comprises 120 static fonts, family packages, and variable support. It is the gem you ought to have in your collection.

Originally developed for academic publishing, Skolar asserts credibility and sustains comfortable reading. It has established itself as a go-to choice for all kinds of scholarly texts, no matter the field or school of thought: it handles the minutiae of linguistic, scientific, and editorial typography with ease. A classic with a twist, Skolar brings a trace of human touch to serious typography. Thanks to this knack for subtlety, it is also successfully used in other genres from branding to children’s literature. Skolar PE has a vast character set that caters to nearly four hundred languages and transliteration systems (Pinyin, IAST/Sanskrit) using Latin, Cyrillic, and Greek (including polytonic). Its larger x-height, robust serifs, low contrast, and its deft italic make it a pleasure to read even at small sizes. With Skolar, footnotes and bibliography become readers’ best friends. The OpenType feature set is engineered for the most rigorous editorial settings. Tabular, proportional, old-style, and lining figures as well as a full set of fractions, ordinals, and scientific superiors and inferiors will stand up to any conjectural challenge. Language-sensitive forms and compound diacritics will handle the demands of many linguistic texts. The companion families Skolar Gujarati, Skolar Devanagari, Skolar Sans PE, and Skolar Sans Arabic expand its typographic and semantic potential even further.

Corsair is a rugged font with a handcrafted touch. Familiar and easy to work with, it has a worn-in feel that slots right into your typographic toolkit like you’ve known it all along. Originally commissioned by Best Made Co., its functional beauty was shaped to mimic the idiosyncrasies of handwriting. Naturally randomised letterforms lend it authenticity, while weathered edges and subtle variations add a hospitable charm. The effect is an honest, approachable, and organic look that’s careful, but that doesn’t overthink it. Goes well with packaging, branding, and product lookbooks alike. Like a writer’s favorite pen, it gets even better with age.

Inspired by the hand lettered phrase “the pen is mightier than the sword” in a 1923 promotional blurb for Speedball lettering pens, Pen Nib Western JNL recreates the decorative style of this vintage artistic gem in both regular and oblique versions.

The sheet music cover of Lew Brown and Albert Von Tilzer's 1917 wartime song "Au Revoir, But Not Goodbye (Soldier Boy)" had its title hand-lettered in a condensed sans serif design with the influence of Art Nouveau styling. This has now been re-drawn digitally as See You Later JNL.

The title on the cover of Street & Smith’s “Wild West Weekly” for Jan. 27, 1934 made for an interesting contrast in terms. Here was a pulp magazine dedicated to stories of the Old West, but its title was hand lettered in an extra bold, squared shape style using a round pen nib – not exactly an alphabet that represented cowboys and desperados… This aside, this type style made for a good digital font revival, and it is now available as Bold Pen Lettering JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

Peas In A Pod may be a cute font, but this type has a plethora of uses. Its use of thick and thin lines makes it a wonderful display font or an easy-to-read body font.

To blend a handwritten style with a graphical aesthetic, Monotype designers paid attention to the balance between the two, hence harmoniously combine their qualities like a mix of tradition and modern. M Felt Pen references the unified stroke thickness and rounded terminals of rounded Heiti typefaces, imitating the fluidity of marker writing. The linked strokes are vivid and suggest the presence of the human hand.

The idea started with the 1934 sheet music of “Mazurka Amabile”. Its hand drawn title had most of the letters rendered in a rectangular shape [‘square’ in the sign trade] that featured rounded corners and terminals made by the shape of the lettering pen nib. A few letters were rounder in design than others, so those were scrapped in favor of a more consistent character shape throughout the font. Pen Nib Square JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

If you're regularly compelled to scrawl fiery French poetry, declare independence, or design indie folk albums, then Chris Watson's romantic Steel Pen typeface is for you. With old-school edge and spirited opentype alternates, it's as gallant as type gets.

To blend a handwritten style with a graphical aesthetic, Monotype designers paid attention to the balance between the two, hence harmoniously combine their qualities like a mix of tradition and modern. M Felt Pen references the unified stroke thickness and rounded terminals of rounded Heiti typefaces, imitating the fluidity of marker writing. The linked strokes are vivid and suggest the presence of the human hand.

The hand lettered credits from the 1931 melodrama “Safe in Hell” inspired the typeface Pre Code Movies JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. The design is strongly influenced by the popular Art Deco style of thick-and-thin characters and also features rounded corners. The font’s name comes from the early era of talking pictures and the short period before the establishment of the Hays Office in 1934 when Hollywood did not self-censor itself. Many then-taboo topics were exploited on film until Will Hays cracked down on such productions. To read more about Pre-Code Hollywood, visit the Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Code_Hollywood

The 1920 edition of “How to Paint Signs and Sho’ Cards” by E. C. Matthews offered a number of examples of then-modern lettering styles for sign painters and show card writers. A bold display alphabet made with a round lettering nib is now available as Show Card Pen JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

The hand lettered title on the cover of the 1938 sheet music for “If It Rains – Who Cares” featured a condensed Art Deco typeface made with a round nib pen. The square shaped characters with rounded corners were a perfect subject for a digital font revival, and are now available as Dip Pen Deco JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

A 1935 song with the unusual title of "Dinner for One Please, James" had its title hand lettered on the cover of the sheet music with simple, condensed letters made by a round point dip pen. This has been reproduced in a digital font as Pen Lettering Sans JNL, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

The Face2Face (F2F) series was inspired by the techno sound of the mid-1990s, personal computers and new font creation software. For years, Thomas Nagel and his friends formed a unique type design collective, which churned out a substantial amount of fresh, new fonts, none of which complied with the traditional rules of typography. Many of these typefaces were used to create layouts for the leading German techno magazine of the 1990s, Frontpage. Nagel and his fellows would even set in type at 6 points, in order to make it nearly unreadable. It was a pleasure for the kids to read and decrypt these messages! F2F EI Dee Cons one of 41 Face2Face fonts included in the Take Type 5 collection from Linotype. Nagel designed nine of these himself."