The shapes of the f-holes on a violin reminded German designer André Maaßen of an italic letter "f". Maaßen used these captivating contours as the theme for his type family, Varius. The name "Varius" is an homage to the manufacturer of the violin that inspired Maaßen's project, Antonio Stradivarius, the most famous manufacturer of violins in music history. Varius has three separate styles. Varius 1 and its italic are the base style of the family, and are typefaces in the baroque serif manner. Varius 2 and its italic are slab serif egyptiennes, slightly heavier than Varius 1's more classical forms. Varius 3 and its italic are semi serif faces; their characters are serifed, but some of the serifs have been cut off. The family is rounded out with two pi faces: an ornaments font (which can be used in conjunction with the text fonts, or on its own to create beautiful borders or individual decorative elements), and a font of musical symbols and notations. Each of the six text fonts has dozens of supplemental ligatures included in their character sets. When these fonts are used in an OpenType-supporting application, such as Adobe InDesign, these ligatures automatically appear in text when the "Discretionary Ligatures" feature is activated. Additionally, the character sets include added alternate glyphs, such as a swash "m" or "n" to finish off a line of text. These can be inserted manually in applications that include glyph palettes (e.g., Adobe InDesign or Illustrator CS). All of the Varius family's letterforms appear slightly narrow, and traces of the wide-nibbed pen can be seen within their forms. Additionally, the shape of a violin's f-hole is a reminiscent element within all of the family's curves. Varius is particularly suited for use many applications, such as body text, newspaper text, display text, headlines, posters, books, screen design, and corporate identity. Use in sizes ranging from body copy text to display and poster format allow the different facets of the typeface to effectively present themselves. The effects can be as versatile as the possibilities! Due to its special character, the typeface could be used in the design of a logo, or within an appropriate corporate design context, to particularly stress individuality.

The Scriptuale family, which contains eight styles, is a contemporary upright calligraphic face. Designed by German designer Renate Weise in 2003, this family of typefaces speaks to the present, while at the same time reflecting on a lyrical past. The letterforms of the Scriptuale family are romanticized, they reference German calligraphic styles from the 19th and early 20th Centuries. For instance the design of Scriptuale's uppercase strays from the canon of classical proportion into romantic idealism. While the C and O are drawn according to the ancient quadratic proportions - almost twice as wide, optically, as the E or the L - the letter A is wider than would be expected, and the D narrower. These subtle differences introduce a different rhythm into text set in Scriptuale than Italic styles of calligraphy may offer. Scriptuale's Gs merit special notice: both the upper and lower case G lunge slightly forward, further enhancing the dynamic quality of the text. Also unique in Scriptuale's design is the lowercase width: the letterforms appear slightly condensed; they have large x-heights to compensate for this. In a delightful twist, the number 2's beak has been closed by drawing it full-circle, back into the stem: this references a style of letter design that was practiced, among other places, by artists from the old Klingspor foundry in Offenbach Germany. Typefaces constructed there easily captured the zeitgeist of the romantic period, but are less calligraphic than Scriptuale (e.g., Rudolf Koch's Koch Antiqua). A semi-serif face (like Prof. Hermann Zapf's Optima or Otl Aicher's Rotis Semi), some of Scriptuale's letters have serifs (D), and some do not (A). And although both the B and the E normally have the same "structure" on their left side, Weise has drawn them differently in Scriptuale. These strengthen the calligraphic-like quality of the family. Traces of the pen are easy to see in Scriptuale's design; it is a thoroughly calligraphic face. The eight typefaces in the Scriptuale family include Light, Regular, Semi Bold, and Bold weights. Each weight has a companion italic. Scriptuale is similar to one other contemporary calligraphic family in the Linotype portfolio, Anasdair , from British designer

First, the important information…Nori is a hand-lettered typeface that contains over 1100 glyphs, 250 ligatures, 487 alternate characters, 125+ swash and titling alternates, lining and old style numerals. To make sure it is perfectly clear—Nori is the result of brush and ink on paper. The textures produced in each glyph are real and the imperfections are intentional and add to the sincerity of the letters. I say this to be as blunt as possible in order to avoid confusion and to frame what this typeface represents—calligraphic, handwritten letters captured digitally for their warmth and poetic variation for print and screen. Like my handwritten, calligraphic or brush-driven faces before it (the Baka series and the TDC2 2010 winning typeface, Fugu), Nori is a product of my analog and digital hand. To view the words and sentences formed by this typeface is to look at how my hands, yes hands, make letters. The fluidity, as well as the irregularity, is human, honest and intentional—to do so lets the brush I am holding breathe life into each letter. Once digital, any number of points and repetitive processes can’t mask its influences—and I like that. The brush, a simple instrument, my tool, my friend designed to emulate traditional Japanese sumi-e brushes... the Pilot Japan Kanji Fude brush pen. Each letter, each variation was written over and over again until I found the right combination. From there, each was scanned, digitized and optimized. Points were removed in order to ‘clean’ the glyphs up some but I did not want to compromise the integrity of the actual brush stroke. Once this base set of characters (about 350) were completed, the thoughtful manipulation of the glyphs, their gestures and forms were further expanded to solidify the embellishments used within the ligatures, alternates, swashes and additional features. This process was admittedly self-indulgent to an extent. I wanted the words created with this typeface to have the flexibility of variation and cohesiveness of movement that someone fluidly producing these letters by hand might have.  I hope you enjoy this typeface as much as I did during the six months working on it. A specimen and style guide is included with the purchased of Nori.