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.

A FEW THOUGHTS Indie is a trendy script, result of the wide range of possibilities that can be achieved using a pointed brush. (1) “You Only Live Once” say The Strokes, (to me, symbols of indie music) so, what would represent that sensation of volatility better than a brush? As you may already know, this time inspiration came from hipsters and indies around us: We may sometimes criticise them, we may sometimes want to be like them, but the truth is that the universo gráfico they generated these past years is gigantic, full of colour and variations. (2) Brush lettering and Sign painting are fields I've been fond of since I started as a designer. Nowadays, these styles are getting a lot of attention and maybe it’s due to the undeniable mark of life that is materialised when using a brush. This tool is so expressive that shows the passions and fears of the artist, and materialises that idea of “living the present”, so popular in this era. When you see Indie, you think of skaters, rollers, surfers, hiphop dancers, street artists, summer, and why not? California beaches. So if you feel life is only one, it’s high time you got Indie into your fonts' collection! STYLES Indie comes in 4 styles plus another one which consists only in capitals. Indie; Indie Shade; Indie Shade Solo; Indie Inline are all open-type programmed and have exactly the same glyphs and metrics, so you can combine them without probem. (I.E. You may use Indie Inline, then write the same word using Indie Shade Solo, and finally put them together). In applications such as Adobe Illustrator, the font has nice results when fi ligatures is activated. However, if you want a more casual look, activate the contextual and the decorative ligatures. NOTES 1. After several years of practicing calligraphy I can say that to me, there’s nothing more satisfying than being able to create fonts out of your own handlettering. I owe a lot of this brush-style to Carl Rohrs. He was the very first calligrapher who taught it to me. His style is unique and what he can do with a brush is truly marvelous. I'm serious. 2. In spite of some particular cases, I can say I'm happy to live in a present in which Typography is living a kind of Renaissance along with Lettering. Like it happened with W. Morris a hundred years ago, handcrafts are being revalued/reborn, and some of this may be happening thanks to these indie designers that, trying to be unique, gave new/fresh air to different areas of graphic design.

Harald Geisler wants to make you as brilliant as Albert Einstein. Or at least let you write like him. Or at least write in his handwriting. — The Wall Street Journal Imagine you could write like Albert Einstein. The Albert Einstein font enables you to do exactly that. In an joined effort, creators Harald Geisler and Elizabeth Waterhouse, spend over 7 years on finalising the project. It was made possible with the help of the Albert Einstein Archive, the Albert Einstein Estate, and funding by a successful Kickstarter Campaign of 2, 334 backers. The outcome was worth the effort: a font unprecedented in aesthetic technique and a benchmark for handwriting fonts. To create a result that is true to the original, Harald Geisler developed a method to analyse the movement of the famous writer. Letter by letter, every glyph was digitally re-written to create a seamlessly working font. It is the only font that holds 5 variations for each lowercase and uppercase-letter, number, and punctuation sign. Each based on meticulous detail to the original samples of Albert Einstein’s handwriting. The OpenType contextual alternates feature dynamically arranges the letters automatically as you type to ensure that no repeated letter forms are placed next to each other. Stylistic variants can also be accessed through stylistic sets. The font has 10 fine-tuned weights ranging from extra-light to fine and extra bold to heavy. The result is a vivid handwritten text true to the original. A PDF documentation, showing step by step how the font was made and comparing numerous original samples, is included with the font and can be downloaded here. The work has been recognised internationally, by press, Einstein fans, and designers. Some quotes used in images: “The font is beautiful“ — Washington Post “If you could write like Einstein, would it help you to think like Einstein?” — The Times (London) “Finally, if your colleagues aren’t taking you seriously, then perhaps you could start sending e-mails in a new font that mimics the handwriting of Albert Einstein.” — Physics World “Geisler and Waterhouse are really asking deeper questions about the diminishing (or evolving) role of our flawed, variable penmanship as a conduit of thought in today’s pixel-perfect landscape.” — QUARTZ “Your writing will look imaginative — which is exactly what Einstein would've wanted." — Huffington Post Arts & Culture "Forget Myriad Pro, Helvetica or Futura. The only font you’ll ever need" — Gizmodo “Capture a piece of Einstein's genius in your own writing." — Mashable

Peter Schnorr was a German artist/illustrator of Art Nouveau period (called Jugendstil in Germany and Austria). He was quite adept at calligraphy and did a variety of commercial work, including business signs. He designed at least four different alphabets and collaborated with Bruce Rogers on advertising work and title page designs for books. One of their clients was the publishing house of Houghton Mifflin. I have not been able to discover anything else about him, but I suspect he might be the grandson of the Bavarian artist Jules Schnorr von Carolsfeld, who was once commissioned to do a mural by Ludwig II of Bavaria (whose famous castle was copied by Disneyland). Schnorr did not give individual names to his fonts. Where there is no historical name, we like to follow the tradition initiated by Bauer and name fonts after their designer, with a descriptive adjective in the designer’s native language. Gestreckt is German for stretched or elongated. An interesting deign detail of this typeface is the cross bar of the “T” --it is NOT symetrical. The right hand side extends only 88% as far as the left hand side (a ratio of 9:8). I presume this was done for a more pleasing letter fit. Today Schnorr’s design is frequently offered under the name “Ambrosia.” However. close inspection will usually reveal that the serifs have been treated differently. I believe our font has a greater fidelity to the original design. Please also compare the design of the various auxiliary characters to those in other fonts. Often they are either borrowed from an inappropriate font of a different period or are missing altogether. We make every effort to design characters that are in keeping with the overall design and spirit of the typeface. For example, see the superscript Registered Trademark symbol (0174) and the Double s (0223). I think both are quite successful. Schnorr Gestreckt ML represents a major extension of the original release. In addition to the standard 1252 Western Europe Code Page with character slots up to decimal position 255, there are glyphs for the 1250 Central Europe, the 1252 Turkish and the 1257 Baltic Code Pages. There are also two alternate letter forms, one ornament and seven ligatures with Unicode codepoints (Private Use Area) and OpenType aalt, ornm & liga GSUB layout features. There are a total of 318 glyphs and 351 kerning pairs. Please note that some older applications may only be able to access the Western Europe character set (approximately 221 glyphs). This release also incorporates a redesign of several glyphs: the comma, quotes, acute accent, and grave accent.

Friendly is an homage to Morris Fuller Benton's adorable Announcement typeface. It is not a strict interpretation, digital revival or reverent reproduction of the original letterforms… but I would be remiss and shady to not acknowledge the letterforms that inspired this typeface. If you are looking for a more accurate 'scanned revival' I would recommend searching "Announcement" on MyFonts. As stated earlier, it is an homage to the original letterforms of the typeface but takes a great bit of freedom tightening the construction up in order to loosen up the movement of the variant letterforms to allow a great deal of usable personality. I enjoy stating this dichotomy… "loosen up to tighten up the forms" and vice versa. It seems counterintuitive or silly but by allowing the letterforms to normalize, I felt more comfortable going back and adding rather indulgent personality. Infused with stylistic alternates, swashes, titling, many many contextual alternates, 9 stylistic sets and 2 stylistic sets with wordmarks, the typeface became far more 'friendly' for me… how could it not? With so many loops, swashes and typographic indulgences, it was bound to be fun. The more elaborate and 'overdone' Friendly got, the more I wanted to slant it. Here's where my thinking differs from MFB's original. I like slanted romans… especially ones with long ascenders, but I do not like much of a slant. It has to be the lettering person in me. It's hard for me to do a completely upright serif and not pair it with an angle, but I did not feel Announcement's 'Italic' offered much and the actual slant needed to be far less. If it's not an italic, I prefer the letters to slant with an angle equivalent to the thickness of the vertical stroke. The Slanted version of Friendly is set at 3.6 degrees, is quite subtle, and very fitting for me. You will find that most characters have a contextual, stylistic, swash and titling alternate assigned to them and some have an echoed alternate to the swash and titling options if the stylistic alt has been selected in tandem. Additionally, all of these are accessible in the glyph palette directly from the base glyph typed or through selecting options through the Stylistic Sets 1–9. Stylistic Sets 10 & 11 are a little different. They are actually configured as complex majuscule ligatures… a result of me getting carried away. Other features like a default old style numeral set and coordinating glyphs have been produced along with case support, ordinals, and more have been added to make it more relevant for contemporary use.

DIN Next is a typeface family inspired by the classic industrial German engineering designs, DIN 1451 Engschrift and Mittelschrift. Akira Kobayashi began by revising these two faces-who names just mean ""condensed"" and ""regular"" before expanding them into a new family with seven weights (Light to Black). Each weight ships in three varieties: Regular, Italic, and Condensed, bringing the total number of fonts in the DIN Next family to 21. DIN Next is part of Linotype's Platinum Collection. Linotype has been supplying its customers with the two DIN 1451 fonts since 1980. Recently, they have become more popular than ever, with designers regularly asking for additional weights. The abbreviation ""DIN"" stands for ""Deutsches Institut für Normung e.V."", which is the German Institute for Industrial Standardization. In 1936 the German Standard Committee settled upon DIN 1451 as the standard font for the areas of technology, traffic, administration and business. The design was to be used on German street signs and house numbers. The committee wanted a sans serif, thinking it would be more legible, straightforward, and easy to reproduce. They did not intend for the design to be used for advertisements and other artistically oriented purposes. Nevertheless, because DIN 1451 was seen all over Germany on signs for town names and traffic directions, it became familiar enough to make its way onto the palettes of graphic designers and advertising art directors. The digital version of DIN 1451 would go on to be adopted and used by designers in other countries as well, solidifying its worldwide design reputation. There are many subtle differences in DIN Next's letters when compared with DIN 1451 original. These were added by Kobayashi to make the new family even more versatile in 21st-century media. For instance, although DIN 1451's corners are all pointed angles, DIN Next has rounded them all slightly. Even this softening is a nod to part of DIN 1451's past, however. Many of the signs that use DIN 1451 are cut with routers, which cannot make perfect corners; their rounded heads cut rounded corners best. Linotype's DIN 1451 Engschrift and Mittelschrift are certified by the German DIN Institute for use on official signage projects. Since DIN Next is a new design, these applications within Germany are not possible with it. However, DIN Next may be used for any other project, and it may be used for industrial signage in any other country! DIN Next has been tailored especially for graphic designers, but its industrial heritage makes it surprisingly functional in just about any application. The DIN Next family has been extended with seven Arabic weights and five Devanagari weights. The display of the Devanagari fonts on the website does not show all features of the font and therefore not all language features may be displayed correctly.

Look, folks! From what may just be the vernacular sign capital of the world, Chattanooga, Tennessee, it’s a brand new hyperfamily from insigne! Look includes three different related fonts, with three weights each. That’s over 70 fonts! Imagine: you turn onto a stretch of open country road. On the distressed, red background of an old barn wall, a large block of crisp white letters shout out: “See Rock City.” You soon realize this barn is not alone in competing for the passing eye. Far from it, ladies and gentlemen. This is just one of the many pieces of historic, hand-painted advertisements dotting the great Southern United States. Yes, these are the pieces of true Americana--the barns, the roadside signs, the machinery, the soda fountains, and more--that now inspire this splendid new set of three font families. This new, easily readable type from insigne digs deep to capture the very heart and passion of this splendid country’s lettering of the post-war era. Look’s compact frame quickly draws the audience to your headline, logo, subheading, or pull quote, working well in those compact spots of text without overpowering your content. You'll easily put the feeling of those days gone by into every piece with the natural beauty and simple usefulness of the Look hyperfamily. Each of the individual sub-families incorporates a variety of font weights with distressed attributes. Think Woodtype. Jeans. Antiques, folks. That deep, ingrained texture--that quality that will stand the test of time. And Look is flexible, too. Take, for example, Look Script. This powerhouse of a font offers thinner weights to give your work an easy-going, down-to-earth design. But bring in those heavier weights, and you'll have a muscular, assertive font that will go the whole nine rounds. Combine any of the Look families with Ornaments to really give your layouts a zing. Build an extraordinary design as well with Look’s swashes and alternates. To activate any of these alternates, just click on Swash, Stylistic or Titling Alternates in any OpenType-savvy application, or choose from the Glyph Palette. Explore hundreds of included extras to find that “cherry on top” for your one-of-a-kind project. There are over 70 fonts to choose from, including subfamily sans, serif, script and ornament fonts! You can't go wrong. To get the most bang for your buck, order the whole Look family now! Note on SHADOWS: Increase depth and make your designs pop! Add shadows to any of the Look fonts by duplicating the text content layer in place and switching it to its corresponding shadow. Color and offset to taste. Look shadows are offset automatically. In Illustrator, you may need to turn on Em Box Top for proper shadow alignment.

As you can see, Nefertiti is a font based on ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and could be classified as a fun-font. I've always been really interested in Egyptology and a couple of years ago I thought it would be great to be able to write in hieroglyphs. I started to study them but soon realized it would take me a long time to be able to do this. Still, I was determined to find a way around this problem. At some point I came up with the idea of rearranging and reforming the hieroglyphs so as to resemble the English alphabet. During this process I tried as much as possible to preserve their ethos and appearance. However, since they are designed to write in English with, it's obvious that they are not always going to look like the real thing. Despite this, I'm really happy with the final result and I think many Pharaohphiles who just want to have some fun will be also. The only difference in this font between lower and upper case characters, is that the latter are set between two parallel, horizontal lines. These are for use with brackets (motif ends) to form cartouches - elongated ovals for names and/or titles. Try typing the following using the upper case in the sample text box. e.g. (JOHN} The zigzagged vertical lines at each end, separate the motifs from the hieroglyphs. Note the three types of ends/brackets. These lines are also used to separated words from one another and to give a more authentic appearance. So pressing the space bar gives a zigzagged line - not a space. They can also be used at any point within a cartouche to separate first and last names or titles. e.g. ; (JOHN;BROWN} walked straight home after work. Notice the eye glyph (period/full stop) at the end of the sentence. This is the only punctuation mark which can be used within a cartouche, e.g. after Mr. or to add a more Egyptian appearance to a name or title. e.g. (MR>;JOHN;BROWN} Parallel lines dividing hieroglyphical inscriptions and writing into rows or columns are very common. To incorporate these in a body of text, simple use the underline U. e.g. (OSIRUS) and {ISIS} were important gods of the ancient Egyptians. (HORUS) {HATHOR} and [RA],the sun god, were also highly revered deities. The punctuation marks available are shown below. . , " " ' ! ? "where is the king?" The font also includes the numbers 0-9, the following mathematical symbols and the hash sign(Scarab beetle). Once again, I've tried to make them look as Egyptian as possible; whether I've succeeded or not is open to debate. e.g. + - x / = # This font is named after Akhenaten's beautiful wife, Nefertiti, who's image can be seen in the graphic on this page.

DIN Next is a typeface family inspired by the classic industrial German engineering designs, DIN 1451 Engschrift and Mittelschrift. Akira Kobayashi began by revising these two faces-who names just mean ""condensed"" and ""regular"" before expanding them into a new family with seven weights (Light to Black). Each weight ships in three varieties: Regular, Italic, and Condensed, bringing the total number of fonts in the DIN Next family to 21. DIN Next is part of Linotype's Platinum Collection. Linotype has been supplying its customers with the two DIN 1451 fonts since 1980. Recently, they have become more popular than ever, with designers regularly asking for additional weights. The abbreviation ""DIN"" stands for ""Deutsches Institut für Normung e.V."", which is the German Institute for Industrial Standardization. In 1936 the German Standard Committee settled upon DIN 1451 as the standard font for the areas of technology, traffic, administration and business. The design was to be used on German street signs and house numbers. The committee wanted a sans serif, thinking it would be more legible, straightforward, and easy to reproduce. They did not intend for the design to be used for advertisements and other artistically oriented purposes. Nevertheless, because DIN 1451 was seen all over Germany on signs for town names and traffic directions, it became familiar enough to make its way onto the palettes of graphic designers and advertising art directors. The digital version of DIN 1451 would go on to be adopted and used by designers in other countries as well, solidifying its worldwide design reputation. There are many subtle differences in DIN Next's letters when compared with DIN 1451 original. These were added by Kobayashi to make the new family even more versatile in 21st-century media. For instance, although DIN 1451's corners are all pointed angles, DIN Next has rounded them all slightly. Even this softening is a nod to part of DIN 1451's past, however. Many of the signs that use DIN 1451 are cut with routers, which cannot make perfect corners; their rounded heads cut rounded corners best. Linotype's DIN 1451 Engschrift and Mittelschrift are certified by the German DIN Institute for use on official signage projects. Since DIN Next is a new design, these applications within Germany are not possible with it. However, DIN Next may be used for any other project, and it may be used for industrial signage in any other country! DIN Next has been tailored especially for graphic designers, but its industrial heritage makes it surprisingly functional in just about any application. The DIN Next family has been extended with seven Arabic weights and five Devanagari weights. The display of the Devanagari fonts on the website does not show all features of the font and therefore not all language features may be displayed correctly.

DIN Next is a typeface family inspired by the classic industrial German engineering designs, DIN 1451 Engschrift and Mittelschrift. Akira Kobayashi began by revising these two faces-who names just mean ""condensed"" and ""regular"" before expanding them into a new family with seven weights (Light to Black). Each weight ships in three varieties: Regular, Italic, and Condensed, bringing the total number of fonts in the DIN Next family to 21. DIN Next is part of Linotype's Platinum Collection. Linotype has been supplying its customers with the two DIN 1451 fonts since 1980. Recently, they have become more popular than ever, with designers regularly asking for additional weights. The abbreviation ""DIN"" stands for ""Deutsches Institut für Normung e.V."", which is the German Institute for Industrial Standardization. In 1936 the German Standard Committee settled upon DIN 1451 as the standard font for the areas of technology, traffic, administration and business. The design was to be used on German street signs and house numbers. The committee wanted a sans serif, thinking it would be more legible, straightforward, and easy to reproduce. They did not intend for the design to be used for advertisements and other artistically oriented purposes. Nevertheless, because DIN 1451 was seen all over Germany on signs for town names and traffic directions, it became familiar enough to make its way onto the palettes of graphic designers and advertising art directors. The digital version of DIN 1451 would go on to be adopted and used by designers in other countries as well, solidifying its worldwide design reputation. There are many subtle differences in DIN Next's letters when compared with DIN 1451 original. These were added by Kobayashi to make the new family even more versatile in 21st-century media. For instance, although DIN 1451's corners are all pointed angles, DIN Next has rounded them all slightly. Even this softening is a nod to part of DIN 1451's past, however. Many of the signs that use DIN 1451 are cut with routers, which cannot make perfect corners; their rounded heads cut rounded corners best. Linotype's DIN 1451 Engschrift and Mittelschrift are certified by the German DIN Institute for use on official signage projects. Since DIN Next is a new design, these applications within Germany are not possible with it. However, DIN Next may be used for any other project, and it may be used for industrial signage in any other country! DIN Next has been tailored especially for graphic designers, but its industrial heritage makes it surprisingly functional in just about any application. The DIN Next family has been extended with seven Arabic weights and five Devanagari weights. The display of the Devanagari fonts on the website does not show all features of the font and therefore not all language features may be displayed correctly.

DIN Next is a typeface family inspired by the classic industrial German engineering designs, DIN 1451 Engschrift and Mittelschrift. Akira Kobayashi began by revising these two faces-who names just mean ""condensed"" and ""regular"" before expanding them into a new family with seven weights (Light to Black). Each weight ships in three varieties: Regular, Italic, and Condensed, bringing the total number of fonts in the DIN Next family to 21. DIN Next is part of Linotype's Platinum Collection. Linotype has been supplying its customers with the two DIN 1451 fonts since 1980. Recently, they have become more popular than ever, with designers regularly asking for additional weights. The abbreviation ""DIN"" stands for ""Deutsches Institut für Normung e.V."", which is the German Institute for Industrial Standardization. In 1936 the German Standard Committee settled upon DIN 1451 as the standard font for the areas of technology, traffic, administration and business. The design was to be used on German street signs and house numbers. The committee wanted a sans serif, thinking it would be more legible, straightforward, and easy to reproduce. They did not intend for the design to be used for advertisements and other artistically oriented purposes. Nevertheless, because DIN 1451 was seen all over Germany on signs for town names and traffic directions, it became familiar enough to make its way onto the palettes of graphic designers and advertising art directors. The digital version of DIN 1451 would go on to be adopted and used by designers in other countries as well, solidifying its worldwide design reputation. There are many subtle differences in DIN Next's letters when compared with DIN 1451 original. These were added by Kobayashi to make the new family even more versatile in 21st-century media. For instance, although DIN 1451's corners are all pointed angles, DIN Next has rounded them all slightly. Even this softening is a nod to part of DIN 1451's past, however. Many of the signs that use DIN 1451 are cut with routers, which cannot make perfect corners; their rounded heads cut rounded corners best. Linotype's DIN 1451 Engschrift and Mittelschrift are certified by the German DIN Institute for use on official signage projects. Since DIN Next is a new design, these applications within Germany are not possible with it. However, DIN Next may be used for any other project, and it may be used for industrial signage in any other country! DIN Next has been tailored especially for graphic designers, but its industrial heritage makes it surprisingly functional in just about any application. The DIN Next family has been extended with seven Arabic weights and five Devanagari weights. The display of the Devanagari fonts on the website does not show all features of the font and therefore not all language features may be displayed correctly.