Tex Mex is simply a spurred version of our Saloon Girl font family. When you think of a classic western font you think of spurs in the letters, with Tex Mex we set out to create a font that stands out and says Western. Whether you're making a new steakhouse menu or a new logo for your cowboy boot and hat company Tex Mex is the font you're looking for. If you're a pioneer in the culinary scene Tex Mex is perfect for you're next cookbook cover, chili cook off or barbecue competition. Just like our Saloon Girl font Tex Mex also works in layers, to make a layered font image you'll need an application that works in layers such as Illustrator or Photoshop.

Tortilla is a flat sided version of our Saloon Girl and Tex Mex font families. When you want a smooth classic western font without spurs in the letters Tortilla is just right. Whether you're making a new Mexican restaurant menu or a new logo for your cowboy boot and hat company Tortilla is the font you're looking for. If you're a pioneer in the culinary scene Tortilla is perfect for your next cookbook cover, chili cook off or barbecue competition. Just like our Saloon Girl and Tex Mex fonts Tortilla also has the option to work in layers using the fill fonts, to make a layered font image you'll need an application that works in layers such as Illustrator or Photoshop.

The classic modernist FS Alvar grew out of a library of pure modular shapes gathered by Fontsmith’s master of the abstract starting point, Mr Phil Garnham. “It was a collection that just had to be explored and brought to life in a typographic voice. “We debated long and hard about this. It was big decision to make a shift away from the typefaces that people knew us for. And we didn’t want to compromise our reputation of well crafted typographic quality”. Modular forms A headline font that’s both graphic and functional, in the modernist tradition, FS Alvar focused Fontsmith’s eyes on the bigger issue of what makes a font show its age. “Looking at those fonts from the 1980s that were supposed to represent the ‘future’,” says Phil, “they looked so dated now. With Alvar, we weren’t concerned with creating future-thinking typography but with exploring form for form’s sake, and how that can evolve to create letterforms. Modular forms with a typographic eye.” Stencilled The concept for Alvar first materialised back in 2001 with some sketches Phil made while still at Middlesex University. Eight years later, something made him dig them out again. “There was something really nice about the proportions of that first design. Working on it again, I thought about it properly, but it still needed something to give it that edge. “Jason stood up in the studio and supplied the missing link: ‘Why don’t we make it stencilled?’ He didn’t mean in an obvious way, but by building a kind of architectural stencil into the form. It worked and the idea of using an architect’s name (Alvar Aalto) to describe the font felt perfect.” Featured in... The three weights of FS Alvar are made for standout headlines in advertising campaigns and magazines. Alvar has had a starring role in campaigns for brands from Nike to Amnesty International, as well as on CD covers, record labels and packaging.

Penitentiary Gothic is a digital recreation of the letters used on California state license plates, designed in order to make props for movies and television shows. The regular style is meant to be used on its own, but the other four styles are meant to be used one on top of another in different colors to create an embossed 3D effect. For best results, use the fill style in a dark color on top of a light colored background. Put the lolite style directly on top of the fill style in 10 - 30% of the background color. Put the hilite style directly on top of that in 10 - 30% of your fill color. Put the shadow style directly on top of that using your background color plus 50 - 80% black.

Wasabi is one of the key ingredients in the Japanese kitchen. Also known as japanese horseradish, it is an extremely spicy condiment made out of the graded root of the Wasabi plant. Its spiciness is different than that of a chili pepper though, more like a hot mustard. The spicy taste shoots right through your nose, but does not last for long. Wasabi is traditionally used in sushi and sashimi dishes, soba noodles, and in a number of Japanese snack foods. Equally sharp and stingy, VLNL Wasabi Turbo was designed by Donald Roos. Despite its japanese outward appearance, the font has its origin in lettering found on a German book. It is hot, and edgy like a samurai sword. Wasabi Turbo will stand out as headline and logo!

English Monarchs is a unique font collection with accurate digital replicas of 84 signatures of English and British monarchs from Richard II through Elizabeth II, including many of the royal consorts. Also included in this font are the Stuart pretenders and Mary Queen of Scots and her consort. A must-have for autograph collectors, desktop publishers, history buffs, fans, or anyone who has ever dreamed of sending a letter, card, or e-mail "signed" as if by one of these famous nobles. This font behaves exactly like any other font. Each signature is mapped to a regular character on your keyboard. Open any Windows application, select the installed font, and type a letter, and the signature will appear at that point on the page. Painstaking craftsmanship and an incredible collection of hard-to-find signatures go into this one-of-a-kind font. Comes with a character map. This font includes signatures from the following noble figures: Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V, Henry VI, Margaret of Anjou, Edward IV, Elizabeth Woodville, Edward V, Richard III, Henry VII, Elizabeth of York, Henry VIII, Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, Catherine Parr, Edward VI, Lady Jane Grey, Mary I Tudor, Elizabeth I, James I, Charles I, Henrietta Maria of France, Oliver Cromwell, Richard Cromwell, Charles II, Catherine of Braganza, James II, William III, Mary II, Anne, Prince George of Denmark, George I, George II, George III, George IV, William IV, Victoria, Prince Albert, Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII, Wallis Warfield Simpson, George VI, Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, Prince Charles, Princess Diana, Camilla Duchess of Cornwall, Prince James Edward Stuart, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, Mary Queen of Scots, Henry Stuart Darnley, Francis II of France.

Designed for Linotype Library GMBH and the International Typeface Corporation in 1997 by Phil Grimshaw. Based on bold script Banco designed by French graphic and poster designer Roger Excoffon and released in 1952 by the Fonderie Olive. Originally Banco was an all-caps bold typeface, and the lower case and the corresponding light weight were created for ITC. The tapering slightly slanted strokes of Banco made by sharp-edged flat brush. The face has the effect of being quickly sketched by a powerful hand. For use in advertising and display typography. Cyrillic version developed for ParaType in 2000 by Tagir Safayev.

A one-time co-worker of mine sometimes used a fanciful inkpen-style script in display-lettering situations. I liked it a lot. "Phil," I says, "why not do the whole alphabet, maybe a few little dingbats, and I'll make a font." Well, one day he presented me with a stack of posterboard; he'd done some letters, all right -- hundreds of 'em. I managed to boil these down into a typeface called Treefrog, a name that seems to match its organic jumble, its tall x-height, its left- and right-leaning stems, its thick and thin strokes. Full release has many dingbats.

Elegant and round Having harboured a desire for a rounded font within the Fontsmith library for some time, Phil Garnham recognised that FS Emeric offered the perfect skeleton around which to design it. Most new rounded fonts rely on scripts or other in-app automation to form their characters. For all their warmth and approachability, they too often conjure images of jelly sweets and sausages. Not so FS Aldrin, where every curve and transition has been crafted by hand, giving a distinctive look and elegant feel. Design highlights FS Aldrin enjoys wide-open ‘lunar’ counters and soft, tube-like terminals. These improve legibility, especially on backlit signage and screens. The open proportions and circular strokes are juxtaposed against a more serious technical aspect that exists within each counter shape. The lighter weights feel precise and efficient, perfect for notes on blueprints or technical drawings. The heavy weights are equally crafted but more playful by their rotund nature, and are perfect for strong headlines or packaging projects. UI icons A suite of 268 icons complement the typeface beautifully and extend the design language in all directions. They cover a range of commonly used applications and themes ranging from ecommerce to weather, and also serve as a solid starting point for a bespoke brand icon set or UI. In addition, born of FS Aldrin’s astronomical theme and playful nature is a special collection of space-themed icons, including rockets, shuttles and lunar modules (hint: if you type the word BUZZ with ligatures enabled, an astronaut appears). Earth to Buzz Buzz Aldrin was the pilot of Apollo 11’s lunar module, the one that put man on The Moon for the very first time. Early on in the project’s life, FS Aldrin emerged as the ideal hook on which to hang the font’s space helmet (hardly surprising given Phil’s fascination with space travel and astronomy). An approach was made to Buzz’s management to see if he would sanction the association. Not only was the great man himself happy to see his name on a typeface, he also asked to use it in his upcoming keynote talks, book launches and online projects.

During a ‘type walk’ at the 2007 AtypI conference in Brighton, typographer Phil Baines pointed out what he considered to be a particularly egregious example of over-decorative art nouveau lettering on a war memorial. This made me determined to use it as the basis for a font. Released in Opentype, it now features ligatures, swashes and alternates. It’s not certain if the curved top bars on the E and F are a feature of the original design or due to climbers using them as footholds, but I incorporated them anyway. It has recently been used for invitations and supporting print material for formal charity dinners at the House of Lords.

L-O-L-A Like the subject of the Kinks’ song, FS Lola is a little bit of both – a font with a rare combination of masculine and feminine. The font was inspired by the song, which itself was inspired by the night the Kinks’ manager spent dancing drunkenly in a Soho club with a beautiful woman... Or so he’d thought, until her stubble started to show halfway through the evening. Masculine/feminin Phil Garnham’s experience in designing FS Lola was similar to the one related by Ray Davies. Setting out to create a sans serif font, he realised along the way that he was actually dealing with a semi-serif. He went with it, though, and produced a font with the best masculine and feminine qualities: hard edges and corners tempered by shapes of softness and generosity, the outcome of what Phil calls an “organic” design process. “Initially, my designs were very graphic and hard but not very distinctive. By printing and redrawing the letters in pencil I achieved a softer and friendlier alphabet with a strong personality.” Broad Lola, as you’d expect, is very broad-minded. Available in five weights with italics – and fluent in central European languages – FS Lola offers a confident combination of feminine softness and male steeliness to any kind of design. As the song says, “It’s a mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up world... except for Lola.

Imagine America in the 1930s. A gangster flick with Al Capone, a crime novel featuring Philip Marlowe. Our hero in a fedora sits in a classy bar, orders a double bourbon, lights a cigar and eyes the evening paper. He turns the pages, reading about a bank heist over on Third Avenue, a scandal involving a baseball player, a small ad for a general practitioner and a large spread about a famous law firm. What do the bottle of booze and the majestic facade of the bank have in common? The elegant baseball uniform and trustworthy attorneys? - Copperplate Gothic - When Frederick William Goudy created his legendary typeface in 1901, it went on to literally become the symbol of early 20th century America. Tiny serifs, characteristically broad letterforms, and particularly bold titles decorated calling cards at 6-point size, enormous bronze-cast logos, newspaper headlines, restaurant menus and more. This was the golden age of Copperplate, lasting up until the arrival of die neue Typografie and monospaced grotesques in the 1960s. Then the typeface almost completely disappeared. It made a partial comeback with the advent of the personal computer; digitizations of varying quality appeared, and one version even became a standard font in Adobe programs. This may have played a role in Copperplate later being used in DIY projects and amateur designs, which harmed its reputation. Copperplate New has been created to revive the faded glory of the original design. Formally, the new typeface expands the existing weight and proportional extremes. The slight serifs are reduced even further, making the typeface sans-like at smaller point sizes and improving readability. In contrast, at large point sizes it retains all of its original character. Decorative inline & shadow styles have been added and both have been created in all five proportions, making it easy to adapt the typesetting to the format you need. Despite these changes and innovations, Copperplate New remains true to Goudy’s original design and represents a snazzy way to evoke a golden era in American culture. Specimen: http://carontwice.com/files/specimen_Copperplate_New.pdf

American Authors is a unique collection of signatures of 75 famous American authors, poets, writers, and novelists. A must-have for autograph collectors, desktop publishers, history buffs, fans, or anyone who has ever dreamed of sending a letter, card, or e-mail "signed" as if by one of these famous literary figures. This font includes signatures from the following literary figures: Joel Barlow, Charles Brockden Brown, J. Fenimore Cooper, Stephen Crane, Richard H. Dana Jr., Theodore Dreiser, W.C. Bryan, Timothy Dwight, T.S. Eliot, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Faulkner, Eugene Field, Philip Freneau, Robert Frost, Hamlin Garland, Alexander Hamilton, Bret Harte, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Lafcadio Hearn, Ernest Hemingway, W.D. Howells, Henry James, John P. Kennedy, Washington Irving, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Julia Ward Howe, Francis Scott Key, Sidney Lanier, James Russell Lowell, Edgar Lee Masters, Cotton Mather, Herman Melville, George John Nathan, Henry W. Longfellow, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Eugene O'Neill, Thomas Paine, Edgar Allan Poe, J.K. Paulding, Sydney Porter (aka O. Henry), Carl Sandburg, Samuel Sewall, John Howard Payne, W.H. Prescott, W. Gilmore Simms, Captain John Smith, Gertrude Stein, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Trumbull, Daniel Webster, Noah Webster, Samuel L. Clemens (aka Mark Twain), John G. Whittier, Thomas Wolfe, Henry D. Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Jacqueline Susann, Louisa May Alcott, Wystan Hugh Auden, Pearl Buck, Edgar Rice Burroughs, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Erle Stanley Gardner, Horace Greeley, Zane Grey, Sinclair Lewis, Jack London, Norman Mailer, Ogden Nash, Beatrix Potter, Ezra Pound, John Steinbeck, Leon Uris, Thornton Wilder. This font behaves exactly like any other font. Each signature is mapped to a regular character on your keyboard. Open any Windows application, select the installed font, and type a letter, and the signature will appear at that point on the page. Painstaking craftsmanship and an incredible collection of hard-to-find signatures go into this one-of-a-kind font. Comes with a character map. Article abstract: American Authors is a unique collection of signatures of 75 famous American authors, poets, writers, and novelists in a high-quality font.

ITC Kendo is the work of British designer Phill Grimshaw, suggesting the dash and verve of quick, sketchy calligraphy, complete with splatters of ink. Grimshaw says he worked deliberately against his own habits to create the forms, drawing the letters with slow deliberation" and a pointed pen. He overloaded the pen with ink and drew on rough paper, "applying a lot of pressure at the beginning of a stroke and easing off towards the terminals. Accidental splashes occurred frequently owing to the nib catching the 'tooth' of the paper." Those splashes were refined into features which enhance but do not overwhelm the characters and carefully worked so as not to leave an obvious white strip of unsplattered space between lines and letters. The initial capitals can be used alone or combined with the lowercase alphabet, and the font includes a full set of f-ligatures and some extra ligatures as well as decorative elements."

The great enigma There are hidden depths to FS Silas Sans. First impressions are of a functional, multi-purpose typeface with a cool, edgy, angular character. Gaze into its eyes a little longer, though, and you'll detect a more nuanced, colourful personality, with full, open, satisfyingly squarish forms balancing the abruptness of the sharply-angled terminals and ascenders. Authoritative, official and stern on the outside; amiable and welcoming on the inside. You’re so Dane The designers, led by Phil Garnham, were trying to capture something straight-talking, authentic, and a little... Scandinavian. ‘We were thinking about some of the characters in Danish dramas that were on in the early stages of the font’s development, like The Killing and The Bridge,’ says Phil. ‘The police officers, that is, not the psychopathic killers. Smart and a bit cool, but with a warm heart.’ For a good Danish name, we settled on Silas. It was that or Hans-Christian. The finer points Silas Sans rewards close inspection. Study, if you will, its amply squarish forms, the roomy ‘o’ and ‘e’, in particular. Observe the angular ascenders and terminals of, for example, the ‘L’, ‘I’, ‘d’ and ‘i’, inferring the movement and lift of a pen. Consider the cuts to the ‘A’ and ‘v’ that create harmony with adjacent letters. And scrutinise the subtle ink traps set within the ‘A’ and ‘Y’ for reproduction at small sizes. A fine subject, we think you’ll agree, and available in a versatile range of weights to make (with FS Silas Slab) a typographic system with a comprehensive hierarchy.

I designed Conium to be a sister font to Nightshade. It was meant to have the appearance of the hemlock plant without being too derivative; it’s thin drooping stems conjure images of Hamlet’s mad Ophilia clutching sickly weeds while thinking them to be flowers. It also projects the appearance of an ice cold, wrought iron, cemetery gate. The sort that one might pass on a damp overcast day. A fitting compliment to an Edward Gorey illustration from top, right down to the frigid ground from which it sprang. Conium has a glyph count of 388 and supports the following languages Afrikaans, Albanian, Asu, Basque, Bemba, Bena, Bosnian, Catalan, Chiga, Colognian, Cornish, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Embu, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Galician, German, Gusii, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Kabuverdianu, Kalaallisut, Kalenjin, Kamba, Kikuyu, Kinyarwanda, Latvian, Lithuanian, Low German, Lower Sorbian, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Meru, Morisyen, North Ndebele, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Nyankole, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Rwa, Samburu, Sango, Sangu, Scottish Gaelic, Sena, Shambala, Shona, Slovak, Slovenian, Soga, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Swiss German, Taita, Teso, Turkmen, Upper Sorbian, Vunjo, Walser, Zulu

Book Jacket is arguably the most famous of all typefaces done in the Typositor era. Designed by Ursula Suess over an entire year, and published in 1972, Book Jacket became an instant success story that lasted well into the 1980s (even though it was copied by Phil Martin who published it under the name Bagatelle shortly after its release). Almost 40 years later, Ursula Suess and Canada Type consolidate their talents to bring you a revised, improved and expanded digital version of this film type classic, including small caps, additional swashes and new alternative forms. Book Jacket is available as a 4-font package in Mac PostScript and universal TTF format, or a single Pro OTF which includes features for small caps, swashes, caps to small caps, stylistic alternates, and class-based kerning.

Born in the 70s Personal influences are unavoidable in type design and usually find their way through into finished fonts. At Fontsmith, one period in particular provides inspiration, according to FS Pimlico designer, Fernando Mello. “Jason and Phil have always known that I’m very into the visual language of the 70s. I know that Jason shares my love of the 70s and Phil will sometimes admit to being a fan, too. I think that’s the reason they were both so supportive in the development of this font. “And, of course, we all share an interest in good-humoured and intelligent design. We like to think it’s a Fontsmith characteristic.” Back from black FS Pimlico started in an unusual place: with a tubby, penguin-like lowercase “a” that Fernando Mello had been sketching. From “a” grew the rest of the alphabet – a bubbly, fat, friendly family with a brush-written quality that became FS Pimlico Black. The black weight certainly isn’t the normal starting point for creating a regular and bold weight, but Fernando pressed on, driven by a glut of influences: brush-writing; Letraset and early digital systems catalogues; the type of Herb Lubalin and Tony di Spigna; 70s clothes and vinyl; and 70s revival disco nights in London’s Pimlico and Vauxhall. Natural or flourished Not often do fonts come along that seem to span the ages. FS Pimlico is at home in an office environment providing a fresh clear identity in communications or providing text that’s clear and easy to read. But it likes to party, too, 70s style. With the OpenType features switched on, a designer can totally change the look of their work, and create point-of-sale, headlines and titles that stand out and get noticed.

Born in the 70s Personal influences are unavoidable in type design and usually find their way through into finished fonts. At Fontsmith, one period in particular provides inspiration, according to FS Pimlico designer, Fernando Mello. “Jason and Phil have always known that I’m very into the visual language of the 70s. I know that Jason shares my love of the 70s and Phil will sometimes admit to being a fan, too. I think that’s the reason they were both so supportive in the development of this font. “And, of course, we all share an interest in good-humoured and intelligent design. We like to think it’s a Fontsmith characteristic.” Back from black FS Pimlico started in an unusual place: with a tubby, penguin-like lowercase “a” that Fernando Mello had been sketching. From “a” grew the rest of the alphabet – a bubbly, fat, friendly family with a brush-written quality that became FS Pimlico Black. The black weight certainly isn’t the normal starting point for creating a regular and bold weight, but Fernando pressed on, driven by a glut of influences: brush-writing; Letraset and early digital systems catalogues; the type of Herb Lubalin and Tony di Spigna; 70s clothes and vinyl; and 70s revival disco nights in London’s Pimlico and Vauxhall. Natural or flourished Not often do fonts come along that seem to span the ages. FS Pimlico is at home in an office environment providing a fresh clear identity in communications or providing text that’s clear and easy to read. But it likes to party, too, 70s style. With the OpenType features switched on, a designer can totally change the look of their work, and create point-of-sale, headlines and titles that stand out and get noticed.

Pragmatica Slabserif was designed as a complement to the popular type family Pragmatica by Vladimir Yefimov and Isabella Chaeva (1989-2004) by addition of square serifs. Inspired by Helserif (Phil Martin, 1978) which was formed in the same way by addition of square serifs to Helvetica (Eduard Hoffman and Max Miedinger, 1957). First sketches of Pragmatica Slabserif were created by Vladimir Yefimov in 1988 during development of Pragmatica. Olga Umpeleva designed the whole slabserif type family of six weights basing on those sketches. All styles of Pragmatica Slabserif coordinate with corresponding Pragmatica styles on metrics, proportions, weights and design. The new family can be used together with Pragmatica and separately. It’s convenient for technical texts, for magazines of general nature, for business applications as well as for advertising and display matter. Pragmatica Slabserif was released by ParaType in 2011.

My affection for Slab Serifs began in the early 1960s in Kansas City when Rob Roy Kelly was at the Kansas City Art Institute, teaching and writing his book on American Wood Type. I got to know him just well enough to gain access to his fabulous collection of wood type and wood type catalogs. Later, in the1970s, I tried to re-create a Nebiolo Egiziano for Roger Black at New West magazine. And again for Roger, in the 1980s, I designed a Slab Serif logo for Newsweek Magazine. Finally, in 2003, designed the Sutro Family. There were things I didn't like about it, so, over time, I’ve been adding some things and dressing it up a little. Sutro Shaded has existed for a few years as a one color, outlined, drop-shadowed display font. It seemed like it was just dying for a little color. I added five more fonts: Fill, Gradient, Hatching, Rules and HiLite. These fonts can be used in different combinations to achieve various effects. There is a downloadable SUTRO SHADED USER MANUAL PDF in the Gallery section for this family.

Looking to add a little Arts & Crafts flavor to your next project? Perhaps you just need a distinctive, new sans serif design? And one with a large international character set. In either case, ITC New Rennie Mackintosh™ may be the typeface for you. Its narrow proportions saves space, and the design shines at large sizes. While it can be an excellent typeface for Art Nouveau flavored labels, name tags and chapter call-outs, this is a suite of fonts that you can also turn to for a bevy of print and on screen uses. Games and apps, as well as print headlines and menus all benefit from ITC New Rennie Mackintosh’s vintage vibe. Based on Phill Grimshaw’s original 1996 design, Monotype Studio designers reimagined the iconic family, added lowercase characters, a new weight structure of light, regular and a more robust bold design; each with an italic counterpart. In addition, a large international character set that include support for many Western and Eastern European languages – including Cyrillic and Greek – give the family a deep typographic bench. An added benefit: the new designs can also be combined with Grimshaw’s original ornament and initial character fonts.

Lyra is an Italian Renaissance script that might have developed if metal type had not broken the evolution of broad pen calligraphy. It lies in the area between the humanist bookhand and the chancery cursive, combining the fullness and articulation of the Roman letters with a moderate italic slant and condensation. A steep pen-angle allows use of a broader pen relative to the x-height, giving the letters more contrast with light verticals and heavy curves. Lyra embodies the Renaissance spirit of refining technical advances of the late middle ages with reintroduction of ancient classical principles. Based on the moving penstroke with constantly changing pen-angle, it brings the vitality of handwriting to the ordered legibility of type. Lyra is a formal italic, too slow for copying books. By eliminating the element of speed, digital technology opens up a new level of calligraphy, bringing it into the sphere of typography as would naturally have happened if metalworkers had not controlled the process. If classical Western traditions are respected, digital calligraphy has the potential to recapture the work of the past and restart its stalled evolution. There is of course no substitute for the charm of actual writing, with each letter made for its space; but the tradeoff is for the formal harmony of classical calligraphy as every curve resonates in tune with every other. This three-weight font family marks Philip Bouwsma's much-requested return from a three year hiatus. It also reminds us of his solid vision in regards to how calligraphy, typography and technology can interact to produce digital beauty and vesatility. Each of the three Lyra fonts contains almost three character sets in a single file. Aside from the usual wealth of alternates normally built into Bouwsma's work, Lyra offers two unique features for the user who appreciates the availability of handy solutions to subtle design space issues: At least three (and as many as six) length variations on ascending and descending forms, and 65 snap-on swashes which can be attached to either end of the majuscules or minuscules. The series also offers 24 dividers and ornaments built into each weight, and a stand-alone font containing 90 stars/snowflakes/flowers, symmetric contstructs for building frames or separators, masking, watermarking, or just good old psychedelia.

The first plain weight of Cutoff was designed in 2005 to be used in Miele, an independent Italian free magazine. The need was for an elegant, unusual and legible semi-serif with contemporary flavour. I was fascinated by the deconstructivist work of Jeff Keedy (Hard Times Thick), Phil Baines (Can You, You Can) and Otl Aicher (Rotis), so my aim was to get the feeling of a cut transitional typeface; at the same time felt the exigence to work on the whole shape of the glyphs, in order to soften the “90s deconstructivist” effect and obtain a more balanced and readable design. In the last years I further worked on the typeface adding the other styles, extending the character set and refining the letterforms. Finally the precious collaboration with URW++ brought in 2010 to a complete OpenType Pro font family, with multilingual and advanced typographic features. Fulvio Bisca, July 2010

Cute FS Kitty is the type equivalent of Bagpuss: plump, cute, cuddly and not fond of exercise. So don’t go giving it a run-out on body copy; FS Kitty is an all-caps font made for showing off in posters and headlines, and on products, point-of sale and especially sweets. Blubber Kitty had been quietly curled up in Phil Garnham’s sketchbook for a year before he brought it out to be brushed up. “It was in the mix as a basic form when I started thinking about FS Lola. It was a twisted, bubbly beauty – quite squishable and huggable. The working file was called Blubber. “At that time it was a basic construction of strokes. I created the ‘A’ first, purely as a shape to play with, not as type. I flipped it for ‘V’, and copied that for a ‘W’. I flipped the ‘W’ for an ‘M’... I thought, ‘This looks a bit wacky, but I like it,’ and just carried on. The most tricky characters were the ‘B’ ‘P’ and ‘R’. I must have drawn about 20 kinds of B for this, just to get it to fit.” Variety “When the regular weight of Kitty had been designed,” says Jason Smith, “it just felt like a natural progression to go on and explore how far we could go with it: Light, Solid, Headline, Shadow.” Phil Garnham thinks there’s still more to come. “There are some really individual characters in this font that I think have yet to be exploited: the Greek Omega symbol, the strange face in the ampersand. Like Bagpuss, Kitty has kept a low profile so far. “We know people are using Kitty. In fact, it was the first of any of our fonts that we sold on the day it was released. But I still haven’t seen it out there in the wild. It’s going to be a exciting moment.”

Cute FS Kitty is the type equivalent of Bagpuss: plump, cute, cuddly and not fond of exercise. So don’t go giving it a run-out on body copy; FS Kitty is an all-caps font made for showing off in posters and headlines, and on products, point-of sale and especially sweets. Blubber Kitty had been quietly curled up in Phil Garnham’s sketchbook for a year before he brought it out to be brushed up. “It was in the mix as a basic form when I started thinking about FS Lola. It was a twisted, bubbly beauty – quite squishable and huggable. The working file was called Blubber. “At that time it was a basic construction of strokes. I created the ‘A’ first, purely as a shape to play with, not as type. I flipped it for ‘V’, and copied that for a ‘W’. I flipped the ‘W’ for an ‘M’... I thought, ‘This looks a bit wacky, but I like it,’ and just carried on. The most tricky characters were the ‘B’ ‘P’ and ‘R’. I must have drawn about 20 kinds of B for this, just to get it to fit.” Variety “When the regular weight of Kitty had been designed,” says Jason Smith, “it just felt like a natural progression to go on and explore how far we could go with it: Light, Solid, Headline, Shadow.” Phil Garnham thinks there’s still more to come. “There are some really individual characters in this font that I think have yet to be exploited: the Greek Omega symbol, the strange face in the ampersand. Like Bagpuss, Kitty has kept a low profile so far. “We know people are using Kitty. In fact, it was the first of any of our fonts that we sold on the day it was released. But I still haven’t seen it out there in the wild. It’s going to be a exciting moment.”

ZX Spectrum In 1982, a home computer came on the market that would launch the UK IT industry. The ZX Spectrum sold five million units and spawned thousands of software titles. It was the must-have gadget for every teen. FS Sinclair is inspired by the memory of Sir Clive Sinclair’s greatest creation: the experience of entering its clunky command codes and reading its simple, grid-placed type. Smart, switched-on, great in text and display, FS Sinclair is a modern grid-based font, drawn with the Spectrum in mind and brought to life by well thought-out design. Formula Having completed the font for Channel 4’s brand update, the Fontsmith team defined the formula for its next font: the creative essence of the C4 work but with more structural discipline, more rigid form and a little more seriousness. The new font wouldn’t look self-consciously retro but it would reference the past and, it was hoped, influence the future. Readability Like the ZX Spectrum, it took a while for the new font to do exactly what it was meant to do. Many of the early concepts by Phil Garnham and Jason Smith were too jagged – the result of an awareness of getting too close to existing fonts of the same ilk, such as Wim Crouwel’s Gridnik. Eventually, FS Sinclair evolved into a more readable, functional grid-based type design that answered Phil and Jason’s original, self-set brief. Idiosyncratic There’s a technological, systems feel to FS Sinclair but ultimately, humans are in charge. The lowercase “a”, “n”, “m” and “r” have clean-cut “ears”, and the square-ish design is softened by round joins on the inside of the letterforms. The idiosyncratic design of letters such as “g”, “j”, “k”, “v”, “w” and “y” bring the design up to date. This is a modular font with character, and a range of weights that allow varied application.

A creative context 2003. Fontsmith was sharing a small, cold, whitewashed studio space in Northburgh Street, Clerkenwell. But things were on the up following prestigious custom type commissions for The Post Office and E4. “Slab serifs were on the brink of another revival, we could feel it,” says Jason Smith. “All we wanted to do was have a play with these slabs, go as far as we could within what was acceptable and readable.” “It wasn’t initially clear what was happening,” recalls Phil Garnham. “We were becoming very influenced by our surroundings, outside the studio space. We absorbed the essence and the designer grime of where we were.” Process Jason began by drawing stems on-screen. “The key aspect of the font is the upward bend of the leading shoulder serif, the way it kind of ramps up and then plummets back down the stem. “The regular and light characters are quite narrow – great for text but the bold is quite wide and chunky – better for headlines. I think ‘y’ is quite different for a slab design. We call it the Fontsmith ‘y’.” Promotion Fontsmith were determined to get FS Clerkenwell noticed. To launch the font, Ian Whalley, a designer friend of Fontsmith, captured words heard on the streets of Clerkenwell, set them in the new font and crafted a small book of typographic conversations. It was a first for Fontsmith. “I think that’s part of why this font has been so successful,” says Phil. “It really does embody the spirit of the area, as a special place for design, arts and crafts. And designers love that.” Contemporary twist FS Clerkenwell, based on influences in and around this part of London with a rich tradition of printing and design, mixes tradition with creation. Old-fashioned values meet new-school trends. Its quirky, contemporary character lends an edge to headlines, logotypes and any large-size text.

Right now! FS Emeric reconciles a pair of seemingly opposing approaches: the systematic but chilly functionalism of early modernist typography, trapped in time, and a warmer, more emotional, more optimistic spirit. What Fontsmith created was something that marries precision with expression, geometry with movement, functionality with humanity. FS Emeric has a sharp, kinetic edge that cuts across design disciplines – graphic, fashion, product, automotive. It’s about what’s happening right now. Contemporary, optimistic, distinctive – a classic working sans serif. Appetite Discussions with some of Fontsmith’s design studio clients had revealed an appetite for a new kind of typeface that could express mid-century modernist principles in a fresh, contemporary voice. As he crafted the letterforms that would form FS Emeric, Phil Garnham was guided by two central ideas. First, there was Jan Tschichold’s contention that a good letter is “one that expresses itself, speaking with the utmost distinctiveness and clarity”. Second was a belief that a font can be personally expressive without compromising its functionality. These provided the fuel that drove the project to its conclusion. Posters To mark the launch of FS Emeric, Fontsmith asked 11 eminent design studios from around the world – the likes of Pentagram, Studio Dumbar, Bibliotheque, Non-Format and Build – to create a limited edition A1 poster. Each poster celebrated a different weight of FS Emeric, and just 50 of each were screen-printed by Dan Mather onto 175gsm Colorplan stock. “We gave away a randomly selected poster every time two or more weights of the FS Emeric were purchased,” says Phil Garnham. “They’ve now become somewhat of a collector’s item in their own right.” Superfamily In the spirit of Univers, the original font superfamily, FS Emeric now comprises 22 Roman and italic typefaces overall, making it one of the most versatile and functional modern fonts across all kinds of media, as well as one of the most distinctive.

One of the earliest fonts published by Canada Type was Coffee Script, Phil Rutter's digitization of Robert Hunter Middleton's 1962 brush script, Wave. In 2010, when the font was revisited for an update, it was shown that it was too light for applications under 24 pt, and too irregular for applications over 64 pt. So the face was redigitized from scratch. This new digitization maintains a soft contour and a steadier stroke, as well as much better outlines for use at both extremes of scaling. Language support was also greatly expanded, and many alternates were added to the redigitized character set. The name was also changed to Middleton Brush, to better reflect the origins of the design, which was Middleton's response to Robert Smith's popular Brush Script Middleton Brush comes in all popular formats. Language support includes Western, Central and Eastern European character sets, as well as Baltic, Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish, and Celtic/Welsh languages.

While sketching for a music project logo, Donald DBXL Beekman looked at several wood type alphabets as a starting poing. One of these was No.120, patented in 1880 by William Hamilton Page. With its distinct diagonally cut serifs and round shapes cut off at top and bottom, it bore just the right feel for the project. DBXL digitized the alphabet, adding all characters needed for a full set. During this process all shapes were widened, tweaked and streamlined to enhance consistency and rhythm along the whole font. VLNL Bonen is an all-caps display font with a very specific western cowboy or circus look. For instance burger or barbecue grill restaurants would do well with this one. We can easily see it shine on a festival flyer or poster as well, and not just country & western festivals. VLNL Bonen is suitable for any ‘big’ use that needs to stand out of the crowd. Bonen is the Dutch word for beans, a world wide source of nutrition and proteins it comes in a multitude of shapes, colours and sizes. Beans are also the most eaten foods in a cowboy’s diet along the trail. Available in abundance and easily preserved and transported, many recipes on the cattle drives in the American Wild West used beans. Think of chili, mashed beans with biscuits and bean soups. “Keep them doggies movin’, cowboy!”

Johnny is the latest addition to the long line of popular psychedelic/hippy/funky art nouveau fonts representing the retro side of the Canada Type library. It is the digitization of a popular 1969 Phil Martin typeface that was known by two different names: Harem and Margit. The film type version had plenty of irregularities and quirks that made it seem like it was done in a hurry. In this digital version the errors have been corrected and the character set expanded to include international characters with built-in alternates, to be on par with what today's layout artists expect from a high quality font. This font saw a lot of use on record sleeves and music posters throughout the pre-disco part of the 1970s, which makes it a veteran of both the psychedelic and funk periods. This makes it the sharper, sturdier art nouveau contemporary personality of Canada Type's Tomato font. This font contains a very expanded character set that includes full support for Central, Eastern and Western European languages, as well as Baltic, Turkish, Esperanto, Greek, Cyrillic and Vietnamese.

Palatino® Nova is Prof. Hermann Zapf's redesign of his own masterpiece, Palatino. The original Palatino was cut in metal by August Rosenberger at D. Stempel AG typefoundry in Frankfurt, and released in 1950. Palatino was later adapted for mechanical composition on the Linotype machine, and became one of the most-used typefaces of the 20th Century. Palatino was designed for legibility, and has open counters and carefully weighted strokes. The type was named after Giambattista Palatino, a master of calligraphy from the time of Leonardo da Vinci. Palatino is a typeface based on classical Italian Renaissance forms. A modern classic in its own right, Palatino is popular among professional graphic designers and amateurs alike, working well for both text and display typography. Hermann Zapf and Akira Kobayashi redeveloped Palatino for the 21st Century, creating Palatino Nova. Released by Linotype in 2005, the Palatino Nova family is part of Linotype's Platinum Collection. Palatino Nova includes several weights (Light, Regular, Medium, and Bold), each with companion italics. Four styles (Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic) have Greek and Cyrillic glyphs built into their character sets. The Palatino Nova family also includes revised versions of Aldus (now called Aldus Nova), as well as two titling weights. The first titling weight, Palatino Nova Titling, is based on Hermann Zapf's metal typeface Michelangelo, including Greek glyphs from Phidias Greek. The heavier titling weight, Palatino Nova Imperial, is based on Sistina. The fonts in the Palatino Nova family support all 48 Western, Central, and Eastern European languages. Additional features: ligatures and historical ligatures, Small Caps, ornaments, and a range of numerals (proportional & tabular width lining and Old style Figures, fractions, inferiors, and superiors)."

Palatino® Nova is Prof. Hermann Zapf's redesign of his own masterpiece, Palatino. The original Palatino was cut in metal by August Rosenberger at D. Stempel AG typefoundry in Frankfurt, and released in 1950. Palatino was later adapted for mechanical composition on the Linotype machine, and became one of the most-used typefaces of the 20th Century. Palatino was designed for legibility, and has open counters and carefully weighted strokes. The type was named after Giambattista Palatino, a master of calligraphy from the time of Leonardo da Vinci. Palatino is a typeface based on classical Italian Renaissance forms. A modern classic in its own right, Palatino is popular among professional graphic designers and amateurs alike, working well for both text and display typography. Hermann Zapf and Akira Kobayashi redeveloped Palatino for the 21st Century, creating Palatino Nova. Released by Linotype in 2005, the Palatino Nova family is part of Linotype's Platinum Collection. Palatino Nova includes several weights (Light, Regular, Medium, and Bold), each with companion italics. Four styles (Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic) have Greek and Cyrillic glyphs built into their character sets. The Palatino Nova family also includes revised versions of Aldus (now called Aldus Nova), as well as two titling weights. The first titling weight, Palatino Nova Titling, is based on Hermann Zapf's metal typeface Michelangelo, including Greek glyphs from Phidias Greek. The heavier titling weight, Palatino Nova Imperial, is based on Sistina. The fonts in the Palatino Nova family support all 48 Western, Central, and Eastern European languages. Additional features: ligatures and historical ligatures, Small Caps, ornaments, and a range of numerals (proportional & tabular width lining and Old style Figures, fractions, inferiors, and superiors)."

Antwerp On a visit to Belgium and the Netherlands while still an MA student at Reading University, Eleni Beveratou made some important discoveries. First, there was the letter ‘g’ from the Didot family seen at Plantin Moretus Museum in Antwerp, which seemed “almost like a mistake”. Then there were strange details such as the serifs on the “l”, “h”, “k”, “b” 
and “d” in Egmont Cursive and other typefaces by Sjoerk Hendrik de Roos, found in volumes of poetry she picked up from a chaotic bookshop in Amsterdam. These were characters that stood out from the text but seemed to blend harmoniously with the rest 
of the letters. “And there it was, the spark. 
I decided to design a typeface that would capture the details of the process of writing.” A guiding hand Eleni shared her initial thoughts with Phil Garnham and Jason Smith. They liked what they saw in her tentative first sketches, and gave her the chance to develop her ideas further. Phil, in particular, provided valuable input as FS Olivia took shape. Eleni’s main influence – the handwritten – would give the font its character. “When creating a typeface,” says Eleni, “it’s fair to say that it reflects some of the designer’s personality. And that’s certainly the case with 
FS Olivia. “Although technology is part of my everyday life. I am a great admirer of traditional graphic design where you can touch and feel paper and ink.” Irregular “What I particularly like,” says Eleni, “is that a printed item can develop its own personality sometimes as a result of imperfections in the print. “FS Olivia has some of 
these characteristics as it’s inspired by handwriting, 
and yet it also includes some 
very modern features.” Feminine and fascinating, FS Olivia captures the expressive twists and turns of (the poet’s?) pen on paper, with low junctions, 
deep top serifs and semi-rounded edges. Round outstrokes contrast with 
the rough corners of the instroke, while strong diagonals and inclined serifs create a richly textured pattern. Polytonic It’s only fitting that there should be a version of this poetic font for one of the birthplaces of poetry and song. Eleni, who hails from Athens, developed an extensive range of glyphs that could be used for the Greek language, in both modern and ancient texts. For the latter, there is a version of Olivia for displaying polytonic Greek (a system that utilises a range of accents and “breathings”), which brings the 21st century technology of OpenType to the presentation of poetic texts from Ancient Greece. Just think what Homer could have done with that.

Antwerp On a visit to Belgium and the Netherlands while still an MA student at Reading University, Eleni Beveratou made some important discoveries. First, there was the letter ‘g’ from the Didot family seen at Plantin Moretus Museum in Antwerp, which seemed “almost like a mistake”. Then there were strange details such as the serifs on the “l”, “h”, “k”, “b” 
and “d” in Egmont Cursive and other typefaces by Sjoerk Hendrik de Roos, found in volumes of poetry she picked up from a chaotic bookshop in Amsterdam. These were characters that stood out from the text but seemed to blend harmoniously with the rest 
of the letters. “And there it was, the spark. 
I decided to design a typeface that would capture the details of the process of writing.” A guiding hand Eleni shared her initial thoughts with Phil Garnham and Jason Smith. They liked what they saw in her tentative first sketches, and gave her the chance to develop her ideas further. Phil, in particular, provided valuable input as FS Olivia took shape. Eleni’s main influence – the handwritten – would give the font its character. “When creating a typeface,” says Eleni, “it’s fair to say that it reflects some of the designer’s personality. And that’s certainly the case with 
FS Olivia. “Although technology is part of my everyday life. I am a great admirer of traditional graphic design where you can touch and feel paper and ink.” Irregular “What I particularly like,” says Eleni, “is that a printed item can develop its own personality sometimes as a result of imperfections in the print. “FS Olivia has some of 
these characteristics as it’s inspired by handwriting, 
and yet it also includes some 
very modern features.” Feminine and fascinating, FS Olivia captures the expressive twists and turns of (the poet’s?) pen on paper, with low junctions, 
deep top serifs and semi-rounded edges. Round outstrokes contrast with 
the rough corners of the instroke, while strong diagonals and inclined serifs create a richly textured pattern. Polytonic It’s only fitting that there should be a version of this poetic font for one of the birthplaces of poetry and song. Eleni, who hails from Athens, developed an extensive range of glyphs that could be used for the Greek language, in both modern and ancient texts. For the latter, there is a version of Olivia for displaying polytonic Greek (a system that utilises a range of accents and “breathings”), which brings the 21st century technology of OpenType to the presentation of poetic texts from Ancient Greece. Just think what Homer could have done with that.

Out of a lifelong inner struggle, Philip Bouwsma unleashes a masterpiece that reconciles classic calligraphy with type in a way never before attempted. Maestro takes its cue from the Italian chancery cursive of the early sixteenth century. By this time type ruled the publishing world, but official court documents were still presented in calligraphy, in a new formal style of the high Renaissance that was integrated with Roman letters and matched the refined order of type. The copybooks of Arrighi and others, printed from engraved wood blocks, spread the Italian cancellaresca across Europe, but the medium was too clumsy and the size too small to show what was really happening in the stroke. Arrighi and others also made metal fonts that pushed type in the direction of calligraphy, but again the medium did not support the superb artistry of these masters or sustain the vitality in their work. As the elegant sensitive moving stroke of the broad pen was reduced to a static outline, the human quality, the variety and the excitement of a living act were lost. Because the high level of skill could not be reproduced, the broad pen was largely replaced by the pointed tool. The modern italic handwriting revival is based on a simplified model and does not approach the level of this formal calligraphy with its relationship to the Roman forms. Maestro is the font that Arrighi and his colleagues would have made if they had had digital technology. Like the calligraphic system of the papal chancery on which it is modelled, it was not drawn as a single finished alphabet, but evolved from a confluence of script and Roman; the script is formalized by the Roman to stand proudly in a world of type. Maestro came together on screen over the course of several years, through many versions ranging widely in style, formality, width, slant, weight and other parameters. On one end of the spectrum, looking back to tradition it embodies the formal harmony of the Roman capitals and the minuscule which became the lower case. On the other it is a flowing script letter drawing on the spirit of later pointed pen and engravers scripts. As its original designers intended, it works with simple Roman capitals and serifs or swash capitals and baroque flourishes. The broad pen supplies weight and substance to the stroke which carries energy through tension in balanced s-curves. Above all it is meant to convey the life and motion of formal calligraphy as a worthy counterbalance to the stolid gravity of metal type. The Maestro family consists of forty fonts distributed over two weights. The OpenType version compresses the family considerably down to two fonts, regular and bold, each containing the entire character set of twenty fonts, for a total of more than 3350 characters per font. These include a wide variety of stylistic alternates, ligatures, beginning and ending letters, flourishes, borders, rules, and other extras. The Pro version also includes extended linguistic support for Latin-based scripts (Western, Central and Eastern European, Baltic, Turkish, Welsh/Celtic, Maltese) as well as Greek. For more thoughts on Maestro, its background and character sets, please read the PDF accompanying the family.

Slab-like sibling Why stop at sans? Rather than leave FS Silas Sans as an only child, the team wanted to extend the family, and create a complete system for brands and editorial. Unsure what the result would be, the team started experimenting with a slab serif version. ‘We didn’t know how it would turn out, but we really liked it and wanted to take it further. A fresh angle ‘We stuck with the angular theme of the sans by drawing angled slab serifs,’ says Phil Garnham, ‘as opposed to the square serifs that slab fonts usually have. That created an inner dynamism in words and sentences on the page, and a very distinctive, crafted character, like a Victorian soul in a contemporary body.’ These crafted touches include details such as the angled ascenders on the ‘i’ and ‘l’, while characters such as the ‘y’, with its abruptly-ending descender, add a mark of distinction. A perfect pair Silas Slab, like its sibling, offers a clear-cut range of five weights, from the elegant Thin to the monumental ExtraBold. Put it together with Silas Sans and you have the full complement, capable of performing the full range of tasks, above the line and below, in headlines, body copy and logotypes, B2B and B2C. Keep them together; they don’t like it when they’re apart.

Tomi Haaparanta got the idea for the Tyke typeface family after using Cooper Black for a design project. He liked Cooper's chubby design, but longed for a wider range of weights. “I wanted a typeface that was cuddly and friendly,” recalls Haaparanta, “but also one that was readable at text sizes.” He started tinkering with the idea, and Tyke began to emerge. Even though Haaparanta knew his boldest weight would equal the heft of Cooper Black, he began drawing the Tyke family with the medium. His goal was to refine the characteristics of the design at this moderate weight, and then build on it to create the light and bold extremes. Haaparanta got the spark to design type in 1990, when he attended a workshop held by Phil Baines at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. “I've been working and playing with type ever since,” Haaparanta recalls. He released his first commercial font in 1996, while working as an Art Director in Helsinki. After about two dozen more releases, he founded his own type studio, Suomi Type Foundry, early in 2004. At five weights plus corresponding italics, Tyke easily fulfills Haaparanta's goal of creating a wide range of distinctive, completely usable designs. The light through bold weights perform well at both large and small sizes, while the Black is an outstanding alternative to Cooper for display copy.