Take a deep breath and tink in a deep and extrange galaxy where texts and signs are extrange for a first human look, with unrecognocible letters standing alone but readables all togheter... this font plays around this idea. Thin lines and simply curvatures define this rare group of characteres, ready to be used to challenge the capacity of adaptation and recognition of readable signs of the human brain. Are you ready to take the trip? Find it out!

Federal Case JNL is a stencil version of Government Issue JNL... adding the feel of industrial, military or high-level government espionage... From the lettering on a shipping crate to the cover of a secret folder of undercover plans, this font fits like a hand in a glove.

This font is inspired by the samples of the booklet "Caligrafía inglesa" published in Madrid in the late nineteenth century by the spanish calligrapher Vicente Fernández Valliciergo. Hundred of new glyphs have been added, taking advantage of Opentype features. Ligatures, decorative figures, initials and final forms, inspired in the samples of English Calligraphy as shown in "The universal penman" by George Bickham have been added to the font. The result is Valliciergo, a font with more than 1000 glyphs, meant to be a useful tool to simulate the master strokes of the great calligraphers.

P22 Tuscan Expanded is a digitization of the mid-19th Century Woodtype font "Antique Tuscan Expanded - Wells & Webb 1854". Specimens of this font are rarely, if ever, seen with a lower case. It is noted in the book American Wood Type 1828-1900 by Rob Roy Kelly that the lower case is "missing". This version was digitized from a recently discovered full set including all lower case plus ff ligatures. One unique feature of this design is the heart shape formed in the V, X & Y.

While throned before your keys, under your drumming fingers awaits the most astounding standard computer typeface ever devised: BuGlobal. In addition to all the usual alphanumeric characters and symbols, this lone font lets you type more than 400 accented letters appearing in more than 80 English-variant languages worldwide, 70 common math and science symbols, and dozens of other useful characters —more than half a thousand all told— all within the digital parameters of one standard computer typeface, without needing any alternate keyboards or other clumsy digital luggage. Here is a sample: You can add any accent appearing in more than 80 English-variant languages used around the world to any letter appearing in all these languages simply by typing ANY letter then the accent. This includes more than 400 diacritic-laden letters in all —without needing to remember several keystrokes to type any of these letters as a few of them appear in standard computer typefaces. You can type more than 50 math/science symbols that do not appear in standard computer typefaces. These new symbols include several kinds of arrows plus constants, centerlines, dimensions, and graphs and scales that when retyped create continuous scales and graphs. Common symbols such as ballot boxes, rating stars, checkboxes, hearts, fancy fleurons, and similar motifs that do not appear in standard computer typefaces. Dozens of flashy arabesques like ========= [in BuGlobal these equal signs are kerned together so when you type them you create a continuous double line]. In this typeface more than 30 symbols that never appear twice in a row are kerned together so when you continuously type them you create all kinds of flashy arabesques that will make your typing more attractive. No other standard compute typeface allows you to do this. As for Beauty, BuGlobal’s characters are designed according to several axioms of ocular perception until each profile is as iconically simple as Shaker furniture. These axioms make BuGlobal’s letters easier to read compared to other typefaces, and a few of them are: Each letter should look much like the others but for one defining detail. The letters should be as similarly wide as possible. The letters’ midbars should be the same height and thickness. The higher the lowercase letters are compared to capital letters, the more legible and easily readable are their texts. BuGlobal has a typeface user’s guide, titled A Lovely Face, in which a description of each ocular axiom compares BuGlobal with Baskerville, Georgia, Palatino, and other commonly-used standard computer typefaces so you can quickly see why the other typefaces are inferior. You can download a pdf file of this typeface user’s guide, for free, at BuGlobal’s website, butlerfontforge.com, at any time so you can learn all about BuGlobal’s many amazingly new features before possibly buying it. BuGlobal’s plain letters are perfect for texts, its italics are gracefully emphatic, its bolds are ideal for titles and headers, and its arabesques are a fancy way to make your texts look dressy —all of which will add more shimmer to your semantic plumage. One good typeface is more useful than an infinity of poor ones. Robert Bringhurst

LiebeRuth is your 100 percent hand-made organic type. She absolutely loves to be typeset in large *and* small sizes, because Legibility is her middle name. (Yes, we know it’s not a typical girl’s name.) She is friendly and polite, but she also has a few quirks. Her friends are impressed with how natural she manages to look every day. Her four weights ensure that Ruth has the right boldness for any context: birthday invitation, personal correspondence, photo album, or billboard ad. During the creation of this font, her designer ate plenty of healthy, organic foods. We think this is the reason why Ruth looks so fresh and lively. And of course Ruth has been designed with lots of Liebe (which is German for “love”—and she speaks many other languages, too). One more thing Ruth is marvelous at: showing off her curly-swirly swashed alternative letterforms that can be activated via OpenType. (Please make sure your software supports OpenType if you wish to use the advanced features.) Each style contains more than 560 gluten-free glyphs—now that is great value! If you like this font, you may want to look at LiebeRuth’s bolder sister LiebeDoni and our best-sellers LiebeErika and LiebeKlara. Or add in some LiebeOrnaments to prepare a curly-licious feast. By the way: LiebeRuth also gets along great with our wide range of illustrative fonts, including LiebeCook, LiebeFish, and LiebeTweet.

Andes, designed by Daniel Hernández, is a display typeface that has neo-humanist characteristics. Its different terminals, among other elements, give it a look of mixed typography. Andes is a typeface with 10 Upright weights, 10 Italics & Condensed version , ranging from Ultra Light to Black, each of the same x-height. This typeface contains additional italic glyphs (a, y, z, g) that help to emphasise text or words. Andes is based on the design of Merced and both of them share several features. This type is well-suited for use in retail, magazines, logotypes, books, etc.

Andes, designed by Daniel Hernández, is a display typeface that has neo-humanist characteristics. Its different terminals, among other elements, give it a look of mixed typography. Andes is a typeface with 10 Upright weights, 10 Italics & Condensed version, ranging from Ultra Light to Black, each of the same x-height. This typeface contains additional italic glyphs (a, y, z, g) that help to emphasise text or words. Andes is based on the design of Merced and both of them share several features. This type is well-suited for use in retail, magazines, logotypes, books, etc.

Andes Rounded, designed by Daniel Hernández, is a display typeface that has neo-humanist characteristics. Its different terminals, among other elements, give it a look of mixed typography. Andes is a typeface with 10 Upright weights, 10 Italics & Condensed versions, ranging from Ultra Light to Black, each of the same x-height. This typeface contains additional italic glyphs (a, y, z, g) that help to emphasise text or words. Andes is based on the design of Merced and both of them share several features. This type is well-suited for use in retail, magazines, logotypes, books, etc.

YinYangMessages contains two sets of letters, those on the upper-case keys that fit on the left side of a yin-yang symbol and those on the lower-case keys that fit on the left side of a yin-yang symbol. One can alternate the two sets manually but the OpenType contextual alternatives feature does this automatically in any program that supports this feature. The family contains two fonts. In one the filled half is on the left and in the other the filled half is on the right. The slash and backspace keys contain blank halves of the symbol, which are useful for completing words with an odd number of letters. The two styles can be used in layers. YinYangMessages is a fun and playful family that every once in a while may be the ideal typeface for some unusual situation.

Introducing Serene Orchid a revolutionary new sans serif font! This modern and evolutionary font combines sleek, minimalistic design with the latest technological advancements to create a font that is truly one-of-a-kind. Serene Orchid font offers a wide range of stylistic sets, giving designers and creatives ample options to choose from. From elegant to edgy styles, this font can be used to bring any project to life. The design of this font is inspired by the natural evolution of design and typography. It embraces the latest trends while staying true to the fundamental principles of typography, resulting in a font that is both timeless and contemporary. The unique spacing and letter formation of Serene Orchid font ensures perfect readability and legibility for any project, and its compatibility with all major design software ensures ease of use. Whether you are using this font for brand identity, packaging, editorial design or anything else, this modern and evolutionary sans serif font is sure to make your projects stand out. Try it out today and see the difference for yourself!

Scratch SCF is a grunge font with a difference. It has an irregular, almost random outline that suggests an old-fashioned quill pen that is leaking and scratching its way across the page. There are also connotations of simplicity, of a writer that is unsophisticated, possibly learning to write for the first time. This is a font that avoids all the associations of slick, worldly-wise urbanity, of cynicism and of "the medium being more important than the message". Instead the simplicity of Scratch SCF conveys a sincerity and integrity of design that bespeaks simplicity and old-fashioned honesty. All these associations are conveyed with a contemporary look, without resorting to rehashing the past with yet another retro font. Scratch SCF has a full character set: all upper and lower case characters, all special and accented characters and all punctuation, numerical and mathematical characters. All have been carefully spaced and kerned. Scratch SCF Staggered is a little more "grungy" than the regular style because the individual letters do not rest on the same baseline and thus have more vitality.

Antique is a bold, classic font with high stroke contrast and no bracketing on the serifs. This letter style was hugely popular during the early 19th century and was the basis for a myriad of other designs. This version is based on wood type of unknown origin.

After the Second World War, the Ionic style replaced Modern Face as the favored typeface for newsprint. A couple decades later, it was in turn replaced by the next generation of newspaper fonts, a mix of Old Face, Transitional and Modern Face forms. Olympian itself tends toward the Old Face style but is nevertheless an example of this new generation, a result of a time of change and experimentation.

Meet Kidsnote, where each letter is like a letter in the margins of the page, written with a ballpoint pen. This dissimilar family of different fonts is framed by the atmosphere of handwritten notes. From block and cursive letters to underlining and mini-doodles, every typeface captures the feeling of writing with a real pen. Like the pages of a notebook, written in small handwriting. Features: - Extras - Kerning

Derived from the world famous Rennie Mackintosh Font, the Scotland St. version gives an outline form of the genius of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. The "Scotland St." name comes from one of Mackintosh's most famous architectural works - the Scotland St. School in Glasgow, Scotland. This wonderful legacy of Mackintosh's genius can be visited daily FREE OF CHARGE, as it has been classed as a museum by Glasgow City Council.

Grit Sans is a font balanced enough to stand strong on the tippy-toes of its pointed "t" ascenders. Even all caps communicates calm. Dashes of whimsy in the proportionately plump X-Heights tell of the accountant drinking too much sherry at the office Christmas party, but thick, consistent strokes never lets you forget his job title. Ascenders and descenders consistently reach the same heights and depths, further attesting to the reliability of this typeface, at even very small sizes. Available in both regular and bold face, Grit Sans is a faithful complement to thin fonts with a pinch of frivolity such as Heirloom Artcraft. It is ideal in use for titles, subheadings, menus, playbills, custom stamps, logos - anywhere a solid font can speak at a volume just above all others.

Ghost Terror is a captivating display font that will haunt your designs with an eerie allure. Designed in uppercase and bold, this typeface commands attention and exudes an aura of fear. Each letter is meticulously crafted with a rounded shape, and some have sharp edges, adding a sense of unpredictability and suspense. The haunting brush details on each letter further enhance the font's chilling theme, immersing your audience in a world of ghostly terror. With its bold weight and rounded shape, this font brings a sense of familiarity while maintaining an air of otherworldly mystery. The mix of rounded shapes and sharp edges in this font adds a dynamic contrast, giving the font an unsettling and unpredictable appearance. The letters seem to dance between the realms of the living and the undead, capturing the essence of ghostly entities that lurk in the shadows. The brush details in Ghost Terror lend a haunting and handcrafted touch, as if the letters were inscribed by spectral beings. These eerie details add a sense of craftsmanship and an element of horror, creating an atmosphere of supernatural presence. For the best legibility you can use this font in the bigger text sizes. Enjoy the available features here. Features: Alternates Multilingual Supports PUA Encoded Numerals and Punctuations Ghost Terror fits in headlines, logos, movie posters, flyers, invitations, branding materials, print media, editorial layouts, headers, and any horror-themed project. Find out more ways to use this font by taking a look at the font preview. Thanks for purchasing our fonts. Hopefully, you have a great time using our font. Feel free to contact us anytime for further information or when you have trouble with the font. Thanks a lot and happy designing.

The Gramma font family provides about 240 very basic graphic structures. Compilation of of this set has been inspired not by symblic but by graphical-morphological concerns. Therefore the three fonts (A, B, C) represent the entirety of all possible and simple graphic forms. Glyphs of this kind are likely to be found anywhere: in scripts, in signage, in branding marks – and so on. So, the Gramma font package is applicable to a great variety of usage. Whenever a free choice of elemental graphic motifs is desired – be it ideographical, pictographical or for brand design, this package provides you with nearly any graphic shape imaginable.

Ravenstonedale is a village in Cumbria, England. There’s not much to see in this quaint village, but the landscape surrounding it is beautiful. This font was sort of based on a number of handwritten letters by English author D.H. Lawrence. It is not a true reflection of the man’s handwriting, though, as I had to design a lot of missing glyphs myself; it was merely an inspiration. Ravenstonedale comes in a slightly slanted ‘regular’ version and a more slanted ‘Italic’ version. In order to stay true to the handwritten nature of this script, I have added a lot of ligatures, plus all the diacritics you could hope for.

The characters in this font are composed of rounded lines with even thickness, giving an impression of neon tubes. Although the design is completely new, it has its stylistic roots in the modernistic 20th century world of steel-tube chairs and fluorescent lamps.

One of Jeff Levine's friends kept requesting that he name a font after her, and he finally obliged with Rachelle JNL. The font gets its inspiration from the antique wood type version of the popular font most often known as a Latin typeface - complete with spur serifs and all of the usual quirks of wooden type.

Corleone was originally designed as a two font family in 2001 and offered for free. This year we've expanded the font family to twelve fonts including small caps and italics. While the new Corleone has been greatly refined and is a much more professional quality font we've decided to still offer the original two fonts for free. Corleone is the perfect font for t-shirts and other merch, the new small caps make this font stand out and bring attention to whatever you use it on. Corleone is the font you can't refuse. Tech notes: Corleone was designed after a famous movie logo in the 1970's with a title name that sounds a lot like The Grandfather if you know what I mean. The movies had three installments, my original font was patterned after the logo for the third movie, the new Corleone Primo and Secondo versions are patterned after the logos of the first two movies. The differences are noticed mostly in the lowercase letters. One thing you will not find in this font family is the puppeteer or puppet master hand because it's been registered as a separate trademark of Paramount Pictures. If you're using an application that works in layers then you'll be interested in the four extra over score glyphs included in some of the versions of this font. Sorry, MS Word does not work in layers so this feature will not work in MS Word. When you open up the glyph map in Adobe Creative Suite you should see the over score glyphs when you scroll down to the bottom. These extra over score glyphs allow you to extend the top line of a single capital letter, with four different lengths you should be able to mix and match to achieve the length that you desire. When using the over score glyphs it's best to divide your word or headline into separate text objects, the cap being one object and the remaining letters being the second. If you try using the over score glyphs on a single text object then with each over score that you add the text after it will get pushed down the line.

Classical Oriental brush font Western Latin + Greek + Cyrillic typeface, created using the principles of Chinese traditional Kaishu brush script (Kaisho in Japanese) and Japanese kana. All Caps Fonts There are different oriental styles in this project, first of them was developed in 2005 for orientalist community Oriental.ru.

Handu, designed by Alex Jacque in 2012, is an affable hand-drawn sans-serif inspired by the hand-painted type and signage on the streets of Kolkata, India. Fitting then that it come to life with brush and paint. When used for display purposes the organic, painted texture of Handu's glyphs really shines. At smaller point-sizes the hand-drawn aesthetic still translates. Handu comes in two styles, regular and shadow. Use each independently or overlay them for a little youthful emphasis.

This unicase typeface, with alternate characters in several of the lowercase positions, is patterned after Mosaik, designed by Martin Kausche for Schriftgeißerei Stempel in 1954. A stencil treatment has been employed, and the outlines have been roughened to enhance its ancient feel. The typeface is named for a king of England, Æðelred the Unready, who ruled over a millenium ago. Unlike its namesake, this typeface is quite ready to do yeoman's duty on your next project. The Opentype, Truetype and Windows Postscript versions of this font contain both the Windows 1252/ANSI character set and the 1250/Central European character set.

In 1990 I designed the font XLeafMeAlone. In 2006 I decided that it was time to improve it. Instead of adding to it, I created two new fonts containing almost 200 leaves: MapleOaks and More Leaves. Among the leaves you will find in MoreLeaves are elm, cottonwood, tulip tree, ash, hickory, locust, ginko, aspen, sassafras, hawthorn, beech, and birch. There are also a few that come from shrubs and I am not sure what they are, but they looked interesting so I put them in. You will not find oaks, maples, or sycamores--they are in MapleOaks. Why leaves? Because people like them. As a large part of the biological world that is all around us, leaves are fascinating in their shapes and endless variations. In XLeafMeAlone I took about 50 shapes and rotated them 180 degrees to give a typeface with approximately 100 glyphs. In each of these two typefaces, MoreLeaves and MapleOaks, there are almost 100 glyphs. Each of those glyphs is rotated in 90-degree increments to yield two families of four typefaces that should be very useful if one wants to create borders of leaves.

Hello Everyone, introduce our new product Speechless is a Playful Handwritten Font with a natural handwritten feel. This handmade font will make your design has a beautiful natural touch for each details. It is perfect for any design project as Invitation,logo, book cover, craft or any design purposes. That is why Speechless has authentic and strong characteristic more natural look. You can activate Ligatures OpenType panel.

Introducing "Tiger Chest" - Unleash Your Creativity with Urban Pop Vibes! With Tiger Chest, your creativity knows no bounds. Break free from the mundane and explore the wild side of design. Whether you're crafting social media graphics, YouTube thumbnails, event posters, or comic book covers, this font will give your projects the urban edge they deserve.

Old English is a digital font that was produced by Monotype's design staff, circa 1990. But its roots go much further back: the face's design is based on that of Caslon Black, a Blackletter type cast by the venerable William Caslon foundry in England, circa 1760. This design has been popular throughout England for centuries. Its style of lettering, conveniently also called Old English, can be found all over the UK. Old English-style typefaces belong to the Blackletter category. They nicely combine the design attributes of both the medieval and Victorian eras. This is mostly because their Textura forms, which were born during the Middle Ages, became quite fashionable again in the late 1800s! This Old English font is very legible for a Blackletter face. Perhaps that is why it is more familiar to readers in the UK and North American than German Blackletter varieties, like Fraktur. A favorite once again today, Old English is ideal for certificates, diplomas, or any application which calls for the look of stateliness and authority. It's a sturdy and sure bet for newspaper banners, holiday greeting cards, and wedding announcements.

Old English is a digital font that was produced by Monotype's design staff, circa 1990. But its roots go much further back: the face's design is based on that of Caslon Black, a Blackletter type cast by the venerable William Caslon foundry in England, circa 1760. This design has been popular throughout England for centuries. Its style of lettering, conveniently also called Old English, can be found all over the UK. Old English-style typefaces belong to the Blackletter category. They nicely combine the design attributes of both the medieval and Victorian eras. This is mostly because their Textura forms, which were born during the Middle Ages, became quite fashionable again in the late 1800s! This Old English font is very legible for a Blackletter face. Perhaps that is why it is more familiar to readers in the UK and North American than German Blackletter varieties, like Fraktur. A favorite once again today, Old English is ideal for certificates, diplomas, or any application which calls for the look of stateliness and authority. It's a sturdy and sure bet for newspaper banners, holiday greeting cards, and wedding announcements.

Old English is a digital font that was produced by Monotype's design staff, circa 1990. But its roots go much further back: the face's design is based on that of Caslon Black, a Blackletter type cast by the venerable William Caslon foundry in England, circa 1760. This design has been popular throughout England for centuries. Its style of lettering, conveniently also called Old English, can be found all over the UK. Old English-style typefaces belong to the Blackletter category. They nicely combine the design attributes of both the medieval and Victorian eras. This is mostly because their Textura forms, which were born during the Middle Ages, became quite fashionable again in the late 1800s! This Old English font is very legible for a Blackletter face. Perhaps that is why it is more familiar to readers in the UK and North American than German Blackletter varieties, like Fraktur. A favorite once again today, Old English is ideal for certificates, diplomas, or any application which calls for the look of stateliness and authority. It's a sturdy and sure bet for newspaper banners, holiday greeting cards, and wedding announcements.

Even though the name seems not to tell much, Indecise shows a clean and coherent design. The shapes of the characters reference the Latin typefaces that were promoted by great figures like Enric Crous-Vidal and José Mendoza y Almeida in the 50s. Indecise uses the body of incise typefaces and gets rid of the subtle terminals for the strokes. It is a high-contrast sans divided into 5 elegant subfamilies, which use different widths. From the condensed version to the extended one, the family includes 50 fonts counting upright and italic. This collection of widths make for many possible combinations of styles. Indecise is a humanist typeface, it puts geometry apart and embraces the calligraphic gesture. This helps to suggest the movement of the strokes while avoiding to create text with a static appearance. Thin and thick strokes come together and define a smooth rhythm for reading.

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.

Hernández Bros, is a typeface designed by Daniel and Eli Hernández. Born in the year 2021, in the midst of the Covid pandemic, from a collaborative spirit where everything called them to work together as family, in order to obtain better results in such trying times. The Hernández siblings, started a ping pong of drawings based on Bulfinch found in the 1912 ATF catalogue. From this exercise, Hernández Bros was designed, a modern Sans Serif, with 8 weights ranging from Extralight to Black. This is an elegant font, with beautiful and harmonious contrasts, which makes it ideal for titles, brands, editorial design, magazines among others.

Clavo was picked for the EXHIBITION CALL FOR TYPE - NEW TYPEFACES and is presented in the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany. Clavo is a multipurpose font family. Its warmth comes from subtle details, classical proportions and traditional forms, while harmonious structure prevents distraction while reading. This makes Clavo a universal typeface. In all sizes, from caption to display. The family consists of ten weights. They were not created in a linear way. The steps between the weights were adjusted carefully to avoid a mechanical graduation, in favor of optical harmony. Clavo covers all latin languages. It contains a wide set of numerals, small capitals, fractions and other OpenType goodies. And of course every weight comes with matching italics.

The idea for Terra Ignota came to me years ago as I was admiring a reproduction of "Amerique Septentrionale," a 1650 map by French cartographer Nicolas Sanson, given to me by my parents. The handlettering has a sort of rakish character, evocative of pirates or adventurers at a time of unbridled world exploration. I ended up putting the project aside, but the idea to create this font tugged gently at my mind until I simply couldn't ignore it any longer. The resulting typeface has an italic slant and a deliberate feel, in keeping with its historical roots. Useful for simulating old hand-lettered documents. Has a full character set (and then some).

The famous roman type cut in Venice by Nicolas Jenson, and used in 1470 for his printing of the tract, De Evangelica Praeparatione, Eusebius, has usually been declared the seminal and definitive representative of a class of types known as Venetian Old Style. The Jenson type is thought to have been the primary model for types that immediately followed. Subsequent 15th-century Venetian Old Style types, cut by other punchcutters in Venice and elsewhere in Italy, are also worthy of study, but have been largely neglected by 20th-century type designers. There were many versions of Venetian Old Style types produced in the final quarter of the quattrocento. The exact number is unknown, but numerous printed examples survive, though the actual types, matrices, and punches are long gone. All these types are not, however, conspicuously Jensonian in character. Each shows a liberal amount of individuality, inconsistency, and eccentricity. My fascination with these historical types began in the 1970s and eventually led to the production of my first text typeface, Iowan Old Style (Bitstream, 1991). Sometime in the early 1990s, I started doodling letters for another Venetian typeface. The letters were pieced together from sections of circles and squares. The n, a standard lowercase control character in a text typeface, came first. Its most unusual feature was its head serif, a bisected quadrant of a circle. My aim was to see if its sharp beak would work with blunt, rectangular, foot serifs. Next, I wanted to see if I could construct a set of capital letters by following a similar design system. Rectangular serifs, or what we today call "slab serifs," were common in early roman printing types, particularly text types cut in Italy before 1500. Slab serifs are evident on both lowercase and uppercase characters in roman types of the Incunabula period, but they are seen mainly at the feet of the lowercase letters. The head serifs on lowercase letters of early roman types were usually angled. They were not arched, like mine. Oddly, there seems to be no actual historical precedent for my approach. Another characteristic of my arched serif is that the side opposite the arch is flat, not concave. Arched, concave serifs were used extensively in early italic types, a genre which first appeared more than a quarter century after roman types. Their forms followed humanistic cursive writing, common in Italy since before movable type was used there. Initially, italic characters were all lowercase, set with upright capitals (a practice I much admire and would like to see revived). Sloped italic capitals were not introduced until the middle of the sixteenth century, and they have very little to do with the evolution of humanist scripts. In contrast to the cursive writing on which italic types were based, formal book hands used by humanist scholars to transcribe classical texts served as a source of inspiration for the lowercase letters of the first roman types cut in Italy. While book hands were not as informal as cursive scripts, they still had features which could be said to be more calligraphic than geometric in detail. Over time, though, the copied vestiges of calligraphy virtually disappeared from roman fonts, and type became more rational. This profound change in the way type developed was also due in part to popular interest in the classical inscriptions of Roman antiquity. Imperial Roman letters, or majuscules, became models for the capital letters in nearly all early roman printing types. So it was, that the first letters in my typeface arose from pondering how shapes of lowercase letters and capital letters relate to one another in terms of classical ideals and geometric proportions, two pinnacles in a range of artistic notions which emerged during the Italian Renaissance. Indeed, such ideas are interesting to explore, but in the field of type design they often lead to dead ends. It is generally acknowledged, for instance, that pure geometry, as a strict approach to type design, has limitations. No roman alphabet, based solely on the circle and square, has ever been ideal for continuous reading. This much, I knew from the start. In the course of developing my typeface for text, innumerable compromises were made. Even though the finished letterforms retain a measure of geometric structure, they were modified again and again to improve their performance en masse. Each modification caused further deviation from my original scheme, and gave every font a slightly different direction. In the lower case letters especially, I made countless variations, and diverged significantly from my original plan. For example, not all the arcs remained radial, and they were designed to vary from font to font. Such variety added to the individuality of each style. The counters of many letters are described by intersecting arcs or angled facets, and the bowls are not round. In the capitals, angular bracketing was used practically everywhere stems and serifs meet, accentuating the terseness of the characters. As a result of all my tinkering, the entire family took on a kind of rich, familiar, coarseness - akin to roman types of the late 1400s. In his book, Printing Types D. B. Updike wrote: "Almost all Italian roman fonts in the last half of the fifteenth century had an air of "security" and generous ease extremely agreeable to the eye. Indeed, there is nothing better than fine Italian roman type in the whole history of typography." It does seem a shame that only in the 20th century have revivals of these beautiful types found acceptance in the English language. For four centuries (circa 1500 - circa 1900) Venetian Old Style faces were definitely not in favor in any living language. Recently, though, reinterpretations of early Italian printing types have been returning with a vengeance. The name Vendetta, which as an Italian sound I like, struck me as being a word that could be taken to signifiy a comeback of types designed in the Venetian style. In closing, I should add that a large measure of Vendetta's overall character comes from a synthesis of ideas, old and new. Hallmarks of roman type design from the Incunabula period are blended with contemporary concerns for the optimal display of letterforms on computer screens. Vendetta is thus not a historical revival. It is instead an indirect but personal digital homage to the roman types of punchcutters whose work was influenced by the example Jenson set in 1470. John Downer.

BluHead Studio LLC is pleased to announce the release of 4 fonts from the Churchward Conserif family designed by New Zealand typeface designer Joseph Churchward. BluHead Studio is in the process of digitizing many of the fonts in Churchward's extensive library of exciting and unique designs and will be releasing them in OpenType format on a regular basis.