The Wood-Regan Instruments Company (Wrico) of New Jersey manufactured for decades a line of lettering kits called the Wrico Sign Maker. With only special ink pens, plastic templates and a template guide anyone could letter clean, clear signs, posters and notices. Based on the same principles of architectural templates, the lettering was [for the most part] utilitarian and functional. Few templates were of stylized or decorative lettering. Informational Gothic JNL and its oblique version are based on the four inch high lettering templates from one of those kits.

Attempting to marry the warm friendliness of the Cubano typeface with the versatility, functionality, and geometry of Eurostile has resulted in Cubenzis. After finishing the regular weight, I realized that it reminded me of old Soviet military hardware, something you might see on the outside of a tank or rocket, so i made the decision to include a full Cyrillic alphabet as well. It feels very sci-fi to me and i can imagine it being used as signage on a ship or as a warning label on machinery.

Too often, familiarity in type design can fool us into mislabeling similar styles of lettering. The Art Deco years provided many variations of the thick-and-thin alphabet, and we tend to lump all of them together as being "a version of Broadway", as this is the most popular of the genre. However, if one looks closely at each design, they will see variations of line thickness, angles and even individual character design. One such variation is Stagehand JNL, based on a set of wood type and now presented in digital form.

Maclean's is a weekly Canadian newsmagazine with a broad editorial mission. A typical issue covers everything from violence on the other side of the globe to the largest pumpkin grown in a local county. In 2001, Maclean's invited Rod McDonald to become part of the design team to renovate" the 96-year-old publication. The magazine wanted to offer its readers a typographic voice that was professional, clean, and easy to read. Above all, the typeface had to be able to speak about the hundreds of unrelated subjects addressed in each issue while remaining believable and uncontrived. A tall order, perhaps? Now add in that this would be the first text typeface ever commissioned by a Canadian magazine. McDonald, who some have called Canada's unofficial "typographer laureate," took on the challenge. McDonald used two historic models as the basis for Laurentian's design: the work of French type designer Claude Garamond, and that of the English printer and type founder, William Caslon. From Garamond Laurentian acquired its humanist axis, crisp serifs and terminals that mimic pen strokes. Caslon's letters are less humanistic, with a more marked contrast in stroke weight and serifs that appear constructed rather than drawn. These traits also made their mark on Laurentian. Using these two designs as a foundation, McDonald drew Laurentian with the narrow text columns and small type sizes of magazine composition in mind. He gave his letters strong vertical strokes and sturdy serifs, a robust x-height and a slightly compressed character width A tall order, per McDonald's genius is evident in the face's legibility, quiet liveliness and in the openness of the letters. The result is a typeface that not only met Maclean's demanding design brief, but also provides exceptional service in a wide variety of other applications. Laurentian is available in three weights of Regular, Semi Bold and Bold, with complementary italics for the Regular and Semi Bold, and a suite of titling caps."

ALTERA a typeface based on a logotype André Toet made for a dutch broadcast company. This typeface is in fact carries a transformation in itself: it’s composed of three different weights and shapes. In our humble opinion the possibilities are endless ! So be a sport and use this typeface for logo’s and headings. Kick the can ! Concept/Art Direction/Design: André Toet © 2017

SPECX This is my #11/12 Font a slabserif typeface. In fact it’s a very, very basic and extreme strong typeface! We gave this new Font a special touch by adding an extra family-member: a stencil-version of the SPECX. My inspiration for the SPECX is based on the cover of a 1955 French School-Notebook. Concept/Art Direction/Design: André Toet © 2017

SPECX Stencil This is my #11/12 Font a slabserif typeface. In fact it’s a very, very basic and extreme strong typeface! We gave this new Font a special touch by adding an extra family-member: a stencil-version of the SPECX. My inspiration for the SPECX is based on the cover of a 1955 French School-Notebook. Concept/Art Direction/Design: André Toet © 2017

Nautica is a new script typeface based on Copperplate’s ductus. High in contrast, it is a very original type with a strong character. With over 1000 glyphs and extensive language support, Nautica offers full professional typographic features. Ligatures and swashes are more inspired by brush pen strokes. Nautica provides three weights and one set of useful icons and knots to improve your graphics. Nautica works very well with Turquoise ; check it out.

One in the series of fonts celebrating the Halcyon Days of Handlettering. Strongs Draughtsman is a monoline font that evokes the sensibilities of the early twentieth century. Based on a font called "architects' pen strokes" as delineated by Lawrence and Charles Strong in their The Art of Show Card Writing from 1922. Both versions of this font contain the Unicode 1252 (Latin) and Unicode 1250 (Central European) character sets, with localization for Romanian and Moldovan.

Hamada is a script typeface based on the powerful work of English calligrapher Gaynor Goffe. Hamada captures looseness and charming irregularities of the pen on the page, allowing ink to edge out from the contours and move across curves and letters. Thanks to OpenType, Hamada creates an impression very much like that of real calligraphy. Most of the letters in Hamada have alternate versions; the typeface comes with ligatures, ending swashes, and more.

EraMax Radial is a geometric sans serif meant to be set BIG, for big statements. It's the perfect face for signage, packaging posters, branding and so on and on, where a strong voice is needed. It has a modern look that will work in a retro setting. Or, should that be a vintage look that will work in a modern setting. This is the first of what is to be a series to typefaces inspired by the original hand painted signage found in the TH&B train station in Hamilton Ontario. This classic Art Deco, Or, more precisely, Art Moderne building designed by the New York architectural firm of Fellheimer and Wagner and completed in 1933. The original lettering included about 75% of the uppercase letters only, so the balance of the uppercase and the lowercase plus all the other glyphs were extrapolated from the look and feel of the existing uppercase letters. Figures are based on the numerals on the station clock, with adjustments made to harmonised with the letters.

Georgia was originally designed in 1996 by Matthew Carter and hand-tuned for the screen by Tom Rickner. The Georgia family received a major update in 2011 by Monotype Imaging, The Font Bureau and Matthew Carter. Georgia is the serif companion to the sans serif screen font, Verdana. It was designed specifically to address the challenges of on-screen display with elegant yet sturdy and open forms. If you must have one serif face for reading on a computer, then you've found the best one right here. The original Georgia family included four fonts: regular, italic, bold and bold italic. The new and expanded Georgia Pro family contains 20 fonts in total. The Georgia Pro and Georgia Pro Condensed families each contain 10 fonts: Light, Regular, Semibold, Bold and Black (each with matching italic styles). Georgia Pro includes a variety of advanced typographic features including true small capitals, ligatures, fractions, old style figures, lining tabular figures and lining proportional figures. An OpenType-savvy application is required to access these typographic features.

Éric de Berranger likes to multitask, and often works on two typeface families at once. Such was the case with Mosquito, a jaunty sans that was developed at the same time he was creating the more traditional Maxime. Mosquito represented a sort of recreation," says de Berranger. "When I grew tired of working on one design I could work on the other and then come back to the first, full of courage and desire!" Mosquito is built from simple, straightforward shapes, but its distinctive stroke terminals and slight oblique weight stress distinguish the design from more conventional sans serif faces. The relatively large x-height and open counters add to the legibility of the design. The capitals are straightforward (with just a hint of Peignot), while the lowercase has a softer, more inviting demeanor. "I drew Mosquito with the hope that it would be pleasant to look at and to read," says de Berranger. "I think the end result is almost feminine." Mosquito comes in three weights, with complementary italic designs and a suite of small caps, old style figures and alternate characters."

Savigny began as an offshoot of Le Havre. Le Havre met my design objective of a geometric sans serif with a strong art deco touch. Le Havre’s primary inspiration came from the art deco titling of the 1930’s, and the lower case was just icing. The art of the 1930’s is of particular interest to me, and I love the art deco era and its art, and the simplicity of geometric shapes. I am mostly interested in designing display typefaces. In many ways Le Havre was the exact opposite of another popular insigne offering, Aviano Sans. Le Havre has very high ascenders, a lower case and is very condensed. Aviano Sans has no lowercase and extremely extended capitals. With the rise of webfonts I began to see Le Havre being used frequently online. It’s short x-height and very tall ascenders made it difficult to read in on screen text settings as it was intended as display type. With this observation, I felt that there is more room for a geometric sans in the insigne catalog. So I set about to design a new geometric sans using the successful skeleton of the Le Havre family. Although I planned to extend the Le Havre line, the new family is so drastically different I decided on a new name: Savigny. The face evolved and began to take on a few humanist touches. Designed from the very beginning as a webfont, the design is open and pleasing to the eye, with a tall x-height. To optimize it for onscreen settings, the spacing is generous. In addition, it includes extended and condensed members, making it insigne’s first superfamily. The family includes over 100 OpenType alternate characters. These include several style sets. Some are stemless, others are purely geometric, and in a nod to Savigny’s origins, Art Deco titling alternates. Please see the informative .pdf brochure to see these features in action. OpenType capable applications such as Quark or the Adobe suite can take full advantage of the automatically replacing ligatures and alternates. This family also includes the glyphs to support a wide range of languages. Savigny is a great choice for a professional designer who wants a well rounded typeface family that is ready for the web.

Lionheart is the digitization and expansion of Saladin, a neo-gothic typeface designed by Friedrich Poppl, long after he established himself as one of the greatest German designers of all time with some of the most “ausgezeichnet” scripts and text faces to ever come out of Europe. This typeface, though lesser-known among Poppl’s other masterpieces, was one of the first in its genre to abandon blackletter influence and attempt letter variations based strictly on Roman alphabet shapes. Poppl’s idea spawned a whole generation of neo-gothics that can now be found on many a movie poster or book cover where the design must hint at secrets and dark sides. Lionheart succeeds with the idea of gradual curves leading to sharp concave or plano-concave terminals, to effectively build serious letter forms that speak of historical mystique and mystery. This font was was named after Richard I, King of England for a decade in the late 11th century. He reportedly exchanged many gifts of respect with Saladin, even though the two kings were on different sides of the Crusades. Lionheart comes in all popular font formats, with some alternates placed in accessible cells of the character set.

Horse Tank, an admittedly wacky offering from Fotostar, provided the pattern for this friendly little face, full of retro charm. Both flavors of this font feature the 1252 Latin, 1250 Central European, 1254 Turkish and 1257 Baltic character sets.

Empire was originally designed in 1937. This version is an all-capitals face with tall condensed characters. The Empire font can be used for headlines and posters where space is tight, or where an empression of height is desired.

Shibumi is a brush-titling face that has an "Eastern" feel. It was designed with a Speedball B (round nib [heavily manipulated]). Its sheer weight exudes authority while the Eastern influence and gentle curves lend a sense of grace.

Inspired from geometric curves and circles, an audacious lower case display face with some alternate characters in Upper and Lower case glyphs. Great for Logos and Logotypes, headlines and larger text. Works well with smaller strap lines as well.

A clean, classic woodtype face from the William H. Page Company, as fresh today as it was over 120 years ago. Both versions of this font support the Latin 1262, Central European 1250, Turkish 1254 and Baltic 1257 codepages.

Chamfer, released by Barhart Brothers & Spindler in the late nineteenth century, provided the pattern for this simple, elegant headline face. Both flavors of this font feature the 1252 Latin, 1250 Central European, 1254 Turkish and 1257 Baltic character sets.

Here’s a classic face from Dutch master type designer Sjoerd H. de Roos. Use it where timeless elegance is the goal. Both versions of this font support the Latin 1252, Central European 1250, Turkish 1254 and Baltic 1257 codepages.

No. 508 is a chunky, friendly, modulated gothic font. Strokes have a gentle inward curve at the median, with the tops and bottoms of the letters slightly wider. The face was introduced by William H. Page & Company in 1890.

The design is influenced by the geometric style sans serif faces which were popular during the 1920s and 30s. The JT Marnie font family is well suited for headlines and small blocks of text, particularly in advertising and packaging.

Gracia Solo is a sister design of Gracia. Gracia Solo has left its connection forms without losing the typical look of English scripts. OpenType features: - central European faces - stylistic alternates - proportional, mediaeval numerals & Roman numerals - numerators, denominators and fractions

Originally issued as Apollo by the Central Type Foundry of Saint Louis, this face evokes the glamor of late Victorian era. Both versions of this font support the Latin 1252, Central European 1250, Turkish 1254 and Baltic 1257 codepages.

A quirky face with a distinct personality, Eclipse is good for logotypes and packaging. The Eclipse font is not recommended for situations where legibility is essential, but more suited where the overall image is more important than the words.

Oksana Std has only the Western Latin characters from multilingual Oksana. It has six weights with real italics, and Alt faces with Old Style figures, alternative characters -a-g-k-y- and ampersand. German großes Eszett is also included.

In 1905, artist and illustrator Will Bradley devised the pattern for this charming face. A little bit quirky and a whole lot of fun. Both versions support the Latin 1252, Central European 1250, Turkish 1254 and Baltic 1257 codepages.

The Roemisch type family is a historic hot metal face with left slanted weights that is used for the german cartographic map production. There are also special typefaces required like the Venus type family and Topografische Zahlentafel type family."

A single top serif creates a modern look between serifs and a single weight font. SingleTyne contains short ascenders and descenders for tight line spacing designed as a display face that also works well for short sentences and paragraphs.

Five years into the 21st century and the promise of nanotechnology, high-end popular culture design seems to thrive on combining opposites and drawing a fine line between traditionally contradictory ideas. This is seen in modern society's usual cultural frontrunners - like consumer electronics, fashion items, music packaging and publications, where it is evident that traditionally complex marketing statements of fashionability and lifestyle are attempted with simple minimalism. But at the typographic end of this realm, the creative majority still uses old faces that help the modern statement only in passing. Some of the more adventurous creative professionals actively seek new elements to emphasize contemporary impact in their modern design. To those adventurous types (pun intended), Canada Type presents this new face called Go. It is very much a child of the new millennium, inspired by the unmistakable minimalist style of modern 21st century corporate logos, recent design shifts in electronic music and club-marketing collateral, and disc jockeys who have enthusiasm, energy, precision and total control of each and every vibration traveling from mixer to speakers. Go is an original modern techno-lounge face that offers the eyes pleasing collages of friendly minimal forms that give the words an impression of simplicity and depth at once. This is a font that prides itself on its precise grouping of elements and just enough original creativity in combining those elements. The precision builds the sharp edge sought for modern statements, while the creativity keeps the message rejuvenated, clear and interesting. Go's character set consists of a versatile and unexpected, yet mild mix of the uppercase and lowercase forms, with multiple variations on the majority of the letters. The e being a vertical mirror of G is only the first of the pleasant surprises. More than 30 alternates are inside the font. All the accented characters in Go have been meticulously (perhaps obsessively) drawn to be unusual for logos and short statements. Take a look at the character map and be ready for a space-age surprise. To borrow a Star Trek cliché, this font can Go where no font has gone before.

Das Riese, a type specimen by the most productive Brazilian type foundry, Intellecta Design, is a mix of victorian and art deco influences. A beautiful display type for tiling with uppercases only. It's shadows and volumes refer to pre-modern age whereas its surface to last century 20's. This heavy sans serif strokes characters have a particular appearance, a parallel line texture that reminds Bifur, typeface created in 1929 by A. M. Cassandre. The sideways absence of volume at some leaning letters right side in addition to the patchy darkness of shadows support its handmade design. A type full of historical references designed to small titles printed in big sizes. It's impossible not to think about posters when you look at Das Riese strong face. - (source Slanted Magazine #8)

Serofina is an adaptable and fluid connected script with plenty of alternate flourish options. From clean and flowing to cute and frilly, Serofina can do it. The Serofina family comes with four weights, including a unique hairline, which makes it a versatile investment for a wide range of design possibilities. All weights include the OpenType programming to automatically and seamlessly swap out the default characters for 45 alternate forms and 18 auto-replacing ligatures. These alternates can make the face appear to be more simplified, restrained or frilly. Serofina also includes seven ornaments and old-style numbers. Check out the sample images to see these features in action. Serofina is a highly versatile script family and its range of weights make it perfect for whenever you need an expressive and original typeface.

This vintage, iconic typeface of original Czech letter-founding has been faithfully revised, extended and newly rendered in 2012. The majority of Vojtěch Preissig’s type faces have been, from their very creation, subject to controversial evaluations which might perhaps fill more pages than have been set in these type faces so far. The considerable technological backwardness of Czech typography between the world wars intensified the author’s creative effort even more. He had been devoting thought to his Antikva type face from 1912 onwards and dozens of hardly perceptible nuances of the same design have been preserved in his drawings. It was his only book type face, but it shows no signs of any hard struggle in creating it. Its extraordinary vividness and elegance are really surprising. It may be still indebted to the forms of Art Nouveau, which was withering away at that time, but its proportions, colour and expression inspire other Czech type designers. Preissig’s Antikva, Menhart’s Figural (and also Růžička’s Fairfield) and Týfa’s Antikva represent a clear line of development, very far away from the soft aesthetics of Tusar, Dyrynk or Brunner. The co-author of the modification for computer composition is Otakar Karlas. Without his experience the work would remain only a shadow of Preissig’s design. Our aim was to produce a large family of type faces for the setting of both books and jobbing works. The digital transcription of Preissig’s Antikva came into existence from summer till winter 1998. The direct model for this type face is the most successful, two-cicero (24 pt.) design dating from 1925. The designs of other sizes (12 pt., 14 pt., 16 pt. and then 36 pt. and 49 pt.) lack vividness and are the source of the widespread mistaken belief that Preissig’s Antikva consists of straight lines. That is, unfortunately, how even Muzika and Menhart describe it. Neither is it a Cubist type face as many of the semi-educated think today. Special attention had to be paid to italics. It is apparent that their design is not as perfect as that of Preissig’s Antikva. In contradistinction to the original we have deleted almost all lower serifs in the lower-case letters, enlarged the angle of inclination and completely redesigned the letters a, e, g, s, k, x, ... All crotches have been lightened by marked incisions. In other words, none of the italic letters corresponds to Preissig’s model. The signs which were missing have been supplemented with regard to the overall character of the alphabet. Preissig did not deal with bold designs, but the crystal-clear logic of his “chopping-off” of the round strokes enabled us to complete the type face family without any greater doubts. An excessively fragile type face, however, cannot be used for setting in smaller sizes; that is why we have prepared a separate family of text designs which has shortened ascenders, normal accents, slightly thickened strokes, and is, in general, optically more quiet and robust. We recommend it for sizes under 12 points. By contrast, the elegance of the basic design will be appreciated most in the sizes used for headlines and posters. Preissig’s Antikva is suitable not only for art books and festive prints, but also for poetry and shorter texts.

Albertina was a typeface ahead of its time. It was in the early 1960s when designer Chris Brand, an accomplished calligrapher, aspired to draw a typeface based on the principles of calligraphy. Unfortunately, typesetting machines of that era put many restrictions on designers. Characters had to be drawn within a very coarse grid, which also defined their spacing. Technological limitations meant that italic designs often had to share the same character widths as the romans. Designers were forced to draw italic faces much wider and with more open spacing than what would be typical in calligraphic lettering or hand-set type. Not surprisingly, production of the first Albertina fonts went very slowly. Brand would submit his character drawings, and the Monotype Drawing Office would modify them to be compatible with the company's typesetting equipment. The new drawings would then be sent back to Brand for approval or rework. Most were reworked. The process took so long, in fact, that by the time the face was completed it was once again out of phase with the times: instead of being released as metal type for the Monotype composing machines it had been tailored for, Albertina debuted as phototype fonts for the Monophoto typesetter. The design's first use was for a catalog of the work of Stanley Morison, exhibited at the Albertina Library in Brussels in 1966. Sales of the design were not remarkable. With the advent of digital type technology, Albertina's story took a far happier turn. Frank E. Blokland, of the Dutch Type Library, used Brand's original, uncompromised drawings as the foundation of a digital revival. The Monophoto version had taken a considerable battering from the limitations of Monotype's unit system," recalls Blokland, "but there was no need for me to incorporate these restrictions in the digital version." With the full backing of Monotype and original designer Brand looking over Blokland's shoulder, a new design for Albertina emerged, displaying all the grace and verve of Brand's original drawings. The basic family drawn by Brand also grew into three weights, each with an italic complement and a suite of small caps and old style figures."

Also known as Schoolbook. 900+ glyphs. After Linn Boyd Benton's and Morris Fuller Benton's 1894 lower contrast version of Scotch Modern, Didone. The part of the large project on revival and further development (by drawing many additional glyphs) of the 20th century’s typewriters’ fonts. And especially the most famous, versatile and beautiful typewriter: IBM Selectric’s golfball fonts, lost for the civilization for many decades after ‘80s, not being created since then in digital vector form. This new sub-project started in July 2018 for the restoration of the most beautiful classical typefaces, used during the 20th century on the extremely rare now IBM Selectric Composer typewriters / desktop publishing systems. Together with Nick Hamze and the Right Reverend Theodore Munk, the collectors of old typewriters. IBM showed the perfect taste by developing these best historical book typefaces of the human civilization for typewriters. So people could type then using both the real book faces, and the famous classical ones.