A page from the 1931 Vitrolite catalog showing illustrations of store fronts and building exteriors utilizing the material provided a classically Art Deco type example. The business name “Sylvin” did not offer many characters to work with, so completion of the digital type design was simply left to imagination. The end result is Structural Glass JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions According to Wikipedia: “Pigmented structural glass, also known generically as structural glass and as vitreous marble, and marketed under the names Carrara glass, Sani Onyx, and Vitrolite, among others, is a high-strength, colored glass. Developed in the United States in 1900, it was widely used around the world in the first half of the 20th century in Art Deco and Streamline Moderne buildings. It also found use as a material for signs, tables, and areas requiring a hygienic surface. Over time, the trademarked name “vitrolite” became a generic term for the glass.”

This font was inspired by the Latin script used in European monasteries from circa the 5th to 8th centuries, before the Carolingian “Caroline” (look at our 825 Karolus). It was a regular script, rounded, written slowly, used mainly for specially meticulous books, with a few ligatures, legible, but only with lowercase. The capitals consisted of enlarged lower cases, but here, we have preferred to use two slightly different patterns. Our lower cases are a synthesis from a lot of variants (mainly from the “First Bible” of Charles The Bald), the upper cases were mainly inspired from a 700’s manuscript from the abbey of Fécamp (France). We have adapted the font for contemporary users, differentiating between U and V, I and J, which has no relevance for ancient Latin scribes, and naturally with Thorn, Oslash, Lslash, K, W... punctuation and the usual accented characters which did not exist at the time. It can be used with 799 Insular Title.

Finally the time has come to publish our new ‘BlackHand’ font. It is a bold and upright handwritten font featuring 150 ligatures, which make for a credible handwritten look and feel. The ligatures will appear quasi random without the user having to search for the right alternate character in a list of glyphs. As you will notice, the font does well in both headers (it even has an ‘instant logo’ quality) and in plain text. The font finds it’s origin in handwritten notes which were done without paying attention to aesthetics. The regular characters and the ligatures were handpicked to form an organic and natural, very readable result. The original writing was done with an Edding 1340 brushpen, giving the font frivolous thick/ thin strokes. We hope you enjoy using the font as much as we did creating it. As an introduction offer, you can get it now at 50% off in the first month after publishing.

Proper was based on handwritten characters (of my own) that I scanned and then digitally touched up. I kept the digital editing to a minimum so as to preserve the freshness of the original. I did, however, want to convey a sense of propriety and regularity and so my original handwriting was done with quite a lot of control. I kept the size of the lower case characters quite large and this makes the font very readable, even at quite small point sizes. Proper may be used when you need clean, legible text, with a natural look, e.g.: -- magazines aimed at the natural health market -- "natural look" fashion pages -- "natural look" decor pages -- natural food products -- natural beauty products -- children's books -- packaging for children's toys, games etc. -- educational material -- comics Proper contains a full character set with all upper and lower case characters, numerals, symbols, accented characters and it has been carefully spaced and kerned.