Dubbel Zout in Dutch means ‘Double Salt’. I admit, it sounds better in Dutch… Dubbel Zout is a kind of licorice which we (in Holland) love! Not many people actually like it, but I know of one addict in Denmark, who eats it by the bagful. Dubbel Zout is a ‘crayon-ish’ font - all caps, different upper and lower glyphs that you can mix and a royal assortment of diacritics. It may be an acquired taste, but once you get used to it, you’re hooked!

Around the turn of the 20th Century, the Inland Type Foundry produced a display face named Studley. It was a variation on a design by another foundry called Florentine. A condensed face with a bold, clean look, the design resembled the warmth and feel of a classic wood type. Best applied to headlines and titles, the font reads amazingly well at even 18 point renderings. Jeff Levine had added his own personal touch to his digital version of this old favorite and renamed it Bayview JNL.

Subroyal was inspired by the official logo of the City of Montreal. The idea came to us while reading an article about a revised version of this logo that didn't have any original typography. We realized it was our civic duty to bring the City logo to life, and the result is a fairly romantic font that reminds us of the many parks around the island, its fragile snowflakes, and its electronic music scene. Voilà! Montreal has its first custom-made (non-official) font package.

Bougainville Neo is a complete remake of our popular Bougainville series which first appeared at MyFonts in 2005. Neo is now in 4 additional weights plus italics. The original typeface family was named in honor of the renowned eighteen-century French mathematician and explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville to whom we owe the naming of South Sea Islands and colorful tropical flora he discovered along his journey. Bougainville Neo makes for effective headings at any size and is equally readable at semi-display sizes.

Architype Ingenieur was inspired by Wim Crouwel’s late 1950s exhibition catalogues and posters, for which he had created a few geometrically constructed, simplified letterforms. In the 1960 Venice Biennale Dutch entry poster, he drew grid-based letters with 45-degree angles for ‘olanda’, the style influenced by his boyhood fascination with naval lettering. A subtle variation appeared in the Stedelijk Museum catalogue for painter Jean Brusselmans. Several dot matrix versions followed. The themes and systems in these early letterforms are encapsulated in this new four weight family Architype Ingenieur.

The Uto font family is named after the island of Utö, the southernmost part of Finland – an ascetic place that’s defined by bare simplicity. The same is true for the font, that’s constructed of the simplest of forms. At the outer archipelago, life is shaped by the ever-changing nature and its seasons. Uto thus comes as a variable font, making it highly adaptable for different requirements. For more conventional use, a compact range of single fonts in different weights is provided, equipped with multiple Open Type numeral styles.

Attic Antique by Three Islands Press. Flipping through a friend’s old hardbound collection of John Burroughs nature essays a while back, I thought it'd be fun to try to develop a typeface with the same uneven, imperfect look to it. I picked and chose among various printed characters, enlarged them somewhat with a photocopier, then hand-rendered each. Had to custom-make some of the accents and symbols, then added a couple goofy dingbats just for the heck of it. The result: an amazingly legible serif family akin to the Century faces.

Biscuit Boodle is a fun and uplifting script from Portland Studios Illustrator Justin Gerard. The characters are brush drawn with a slight texture. The font comes packed with OpenType alternates and ligatures. Included are small caps, old style figures, titling alternates and ending swashes. Sixty-four optional ligatures add a slapdash quality to your copy and make sure that no two letters in a word are alike, and auto replacing word ligatures add to the fun. The Biscuit Boodle family also includes an even more spontaneous alternate and even ornaments for even more creative options.

Surf and Turf JNL was redrawn from hand-lettering on a souvenir folder for an event believed to be sponsored by Miami Beach's exclusive Surf Club on March 19, 1938. Entitled "Steeplechase Pier March 19 Surf Club Stroller", it's now lost to time whether the event recreated some of the fun and games of Atlantic City's famed Steeplechase Pier at the Surf Club, or if this was a special event trip to the New Jersey venue. It's also highly possible that the Steeplechase Pier referred to in the title was the one at Coney Island.

Shelley Script was designed by Matthew Carter and appeared with Mergenthaler Linotype in 1972. It is based on intricate English scripts of the 18th and 19th centuries. The musical terms Andante, Allegro and Volante were chosen by Carter to describe the mood of the three different cuts of his font. Andante is the most reserved, Allegro has a few more flourishes, and Volante’s capital letters are surrounded with swirling strokes. Perfect for invitations or other cards, Shelley Script, like other fonts of its kind, seems to appeal particularly to America.

Neon Love was designed originally for a circle coaster design with a quote by the Beatles’ “All you need is Love, Love is all you need”. The inspiration of the lettering was a neon sign style where a cursive script is kind of bended from those glass wires. The idea was to get the overall look and feel of neon signs into a font, as well as creating a good raw material to use for some further photoshop effects to enhance the visual presentation. Neon Love has many OpenType features that allow for choices that can make the lettering unique. Neon Love has two versions of the font a Smooth one which is connected and the Cutout version which can be used to create neons and for this it is in parts. Design by Roland Hüse and Schriftlabor team.

Un Jour Merveilleux means "a Wonderful Day" in French. This font is a Modern Calligraphy script with stylistic alternates for all the lowercase letters and numbers for a natural flow and rhythm. Smaller and larger alternates are set to switch between each other within the Contextual Alternates OpenType rule, so make sure to enable this feature while setting text with this font. Alternatively you may select and replace characters from the Glyphs window manually. There are PUA encoded ligatures for the double letters bb, ht, li, ll, lt, on, oo, rr, ss and tt. The font set covers Eastern, Central and Western European accented Latin Languages. Hope you like this font and it will add a beautiful fresh touch to your new project! Roland Image credits: Photo by Plush Design Studio on Unsplash Coffee on Table: Kelly Lockett @kellylock

Ciseaux was inspired and is dedicated to the art of paper cutting. Early paper cutting artists were often royalty, but it soon became a folk art practiced by commoners whose cutouts decorated their homes. By the seventeenth century it had spread throughout the world. The Japanese called it Mon-kiri, the German's Scherenschnitte and Turkey even boasted a guild devoted to the art form. In Poland the designs were traditionally symmetrical and often used layers of colors to form pictorial collages. When Russian invaders confiscated scissors, villagers were found to cut their intricate designs with sheep shears! The art form later developed into cutting out elaborate designs of nature scenes and people, celebrating special occasions and even decorating legal documents. Ciseaux letterforms mimic paper cutting art in its shapes with a rather loose and almost joyous rhythm. The overall effect is somewhat earthy and natural yet it has an element of sophistication that cannot be ignored. Just like paper cutting, Ciseaux can be used for special occasions like invitations, brochures, identities, restaurant menus, and if you dare, some awesome looking paper graffiti. Available in TT, PS and Opentype for Mac and Windows.

We’re in a lockdown of sorts (again) and things are pretty … uhm … boring at the moment. No going out for a coffee, no school (so the kids are at home), no meeting with friends… The new reality kinda sucks if I say so myself. Besides that, it turns out that we have a new dominant type of Covid in Holland.. wait, Dominant Type! Ahh, great name for my latest font! Dominant Type is a handmade all caps font. It comes with extensive language support (including Vietnamese) and 2 sets of alternate glyphs for that bit of ‘random awesomeness’!

The basic letterforms of this typeface were found in a lettering book, Rotalución Decorativa, published in Barcelona in the 1940s. Add a lowercase and a few flourishes suggested by a hand-painted sign seen at a neighborhood tavern on Staten Island, and you have a seriously fun face. To add even more spice, the font also contains alternate characters in the Logical Not, ASCII circumflex and tilde positions. It also contains a few alternate characters in the ASCII circumflex and tilde positions to perk things up. Both versions of the font contain characters to support all major European languages.

I have been to Japan many times, but I have to admit that I have not (yet) been to Odaiba, so this font is a reminder that I should go there one day. Odaiba is a large artificial Island in the bay of Tokyo. It is a popular shopping and sightseeing destination and its sights include a copy of the Statue of Liberty and a mega-sized Gundam Robot. Odaiba Script is a handwritten font. I used a Sharpie pen on paper, so it is nice and thick. It comes with double letter ligatures and all diacritics.

I bought a pineapple the other day, because my kids really like pineapples. Ok, ok, it may not sound like something special to you - but keep in mind that pineapples in Holland are an expensive fruit. We mostly get the canned ones (which I don’t like too much). Anyway, when I was slicing up the pineapple, I thought I should name a font after this bizarre, but tasty, fruit. And so I did. Pineapple Daydream is a handmade serif. I am not sure how to classify it, but I am sure you’ll figure that out. Comes with a plantation of diacritics.

“In some way I was Mr Mamoulian, and someone else was writing and drawing this stuff. He kept sending me these pages. I had to sign my name and pass them off as my own. I had no choice. He was holding my aged mother hostage, you see. I told him when the pages were due and he somehow got them to me. Sometimes he left them in secret locations. I don't remember them at all.” -- Brian Bolland Mr. Mamoulian has four weights with automatic alternating uppercase letters, Crossbar I Technology, and European, Vietnamese & Cyrillic language support.

The font was inspired by the persistent demands of editors for scripts which actually looked like real handwriting, a lot of historical fiction projects and a love of maps. While making a map for a prequel to Treasure Island I decided to make a font from the lettering of some Caribbean maps of the period. The glyphs are all hand drawn vector outlines which although very legible and consistent in style carry the variation and irregularity you expect from handwriting. This font has been featured on maps for books by authors such as Peter V. Brett, Mark Lawrence and Michael Crichton.

I remember that my auntie once made a dish called ‘Macaroni and Smac’. It consisted of little ‘elbow’ macaroni, Spam (which in Holland was called Smac), cheese and ketchup. I am sure it didn’t contain on of your five a day, but it was delicious. As far as I know, I have eaten it only once, but it did make a lasting impression! Biscuits & Spam is a handmade ‘Western’ style font, which I found in my ‘unfinished fonts’ folder. It comes with multilingual support, a full set of alternates for the lower case letters and a really happy vibe.

Transport yourself back to the year 1994, a time when MS DOS games ignited the imagination of an impressionable young boy. Enchanted by the pixelated wonders of that era, he embarks on a journey that will shape his creative destiny. As the boy loses himself in the captivating landscapes of Commander Keen, the strategic depths of Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, and the mysterious quests of The Secret of Monkey Island, a seed is planted in his mind. The beauty of these games' typography, crafted pixel by pixel, captivates his young heart and fuels a passion for design.

Kaikoura is a small town on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand. It is a very pleasant, laid-back place where the mountains meet the sea. Kaikoura is also the best place in the world to spot sperm whales. Kaikoura font is quite similar in appearance: it is laid-back and beautiful, has sharp peaks and generous curves. I am still trying to find out how to add whale watching to this description… Kaikoura is an all caps font with a lower case alternative for the o and y. It comes with an ocean of diacritics.

We just had the Eurovision Song Contest here in Holland. I quite like to watch it, as it is usually a freak show of kitsch, political incorrectness and often really bad music. But it is a laugh and this year was no different. It inspired me to create this particular font with this particular name. Sing Along is a happy, wobbly, kitschy font that comes with a bit of ‘over-the-topness’, a few personality issues and an unsteady gait. Needless to say, it is politically incorrect, but that, my friends, is not necessarily a bad thing.

Sheet music for the tune "Put Your Arms Around Me Honey" (from the 1937 film "Coney Island" starring Betty Grable, George Montgomery and Cesar Romero) has the song title hand lettered in a condensed Art Deco sans serif design. This became the basis for Deco Nights JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. For trivia buffs, the song was written by Junie McCree and Albert Von Tilzer and was first featured in the Broadway show "Madame Sherry" in 1910 and was revived for a second time in the 1949 Judy Garland -Van Johnson film "In the Good Old Summertime".

To start with one personal fact: I really like to listen Rahsaan Roland Kirk. He was a multi-instrumentalist, real grandmaster and unique jazz virtuoso. The way he improvised and walked through variety of different music influences are admiring. One of things he liked is to modify instruments, so he modified soprano saxophone and got an instrument called manzello. When I was looking for good name for this typeface, it came on my mind that Manzello could be the perfect one. It has the symbolic background from the instrument and theoretically in my head, it's imagined as typeface that rely on stable classic examples, but graphically designed and modified to match modern standards. Manzello contains a dose of characteristics of display typefaces with terminals that aren't perfectly rounded, high contrast between stems and good balanced Italics with elements of fine calligraphy. It's a small font family, something what I was always looking for to have as first text solution in my web and graphic projects.

Brogue was designed to be a display typeface, but it can be used for a small body of text. At its core it is an uncial influenced typeface that has been allowed to stray from its roots. Embracing other alphabets, Brogue mixes in some unexpected letterforms that really give it a quirky and unusual look. Because Brogue is unicase it allows the designer to mix and match the roman, italic, upper and lowercase letters together for a truly unique design. Brogue's character set will support the following languages: Azerbaijani (Latin), Belarusian (Latin), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Iclandic, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovac, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish

P22 Kirkwall is an unusual and elegant design. The upper case letters have a slightly curved stem that ends in a small serif and wedge crossbars. The lower case letters have a fluid and easy design with end-hooks and long leading serifs. Kirkwall Trim and Bold Trim styles contain an alternate set of lower case characters without the long leading serifs and end-hooks. P22 Kirkwall is appealing for display work and appropriate for short texts and headlines. According to the designer: "The type design is inspired by my meeting with the people of Orkney Island and their culture, and it's my tribute to the St. Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall."

Chilango is a beautiful new typeface based on the gorgeous hand-painted street signs of Mexico City.., It come with 7 weights and a unique Italic family. Throughout Mexico City, from the Centro Historic (Zocalo) through La Condessa, Polanco and Guerrero - from La Roma to San Rafael to Atlampa to Lomas, you can be sure to see the iconic hand painted blue with white lettered street signs wherever you go. It is an exuberant and flourishing font that represents this fabulous flourishing city to its core. It is a historical one, classy and stylish and deeply routed in the curvature and designs of the Spanish heritage.

Bornholm Tejn is named after a village »Tejn« on the only rocky island in Denmark »Bornholm« Bornholm Tejn Low is the lowercase variant of Bornholm Tejn, released in 2012, the first face in a series of rough stone cut typefaces, that shares proportions, but differs in any other aspect like different pieces of rock. It is a powerful face, but still very friendly. Good for very big sizes, but can be used for small texts, movie titles, cartoons … Bornholm Tejn Low has a large x-height which supports the heavy and black look of the typeface. It contains tabular and proportional old style and lining figures.

I traveled a lot: in the beginning on my own, later as a tour guide. I always used the English word ‘abroad’ to describe a trip to a foreign country, but I noticed that the English, Australians and New Zealanders preferred the word ‘overseas’. I then realised that they all lived on an island, so most of the foreign countries for them were across the sea. I had to think of that when I made this font! Overseas is a brush font with a certain rough elegance to it. I made it using poster paint and a brush. Use if for posters, product packaging and book covers.

The designer-favorite Blue Goblet series has been extended once again with Blue Goblet Frames and Vignettes. These animated and lively frames and vignettes can be resized easily without any loss of quality, and can easily be converted to outlines and modified. Combining them to form unique compositions or inserting them into chapter headings are just a few ideas for these versatile ornaments. Please see the sample .pdf to see all 96 Frames and Vignettes in action, and be sure to check out the rest of the Blue Goblet series, especially Blue Goblet Frames and Vignettes #2 Blue Goblet Frames and Vignettes is a collaboration between insigne Design and Portland Studios.

Named for the island that I had the pleasure of calling home for four years, Samui Script is a lovingly made, hand-lettering-style, script font, with a bouncy baseline and exuberant character. Taking mid 20th century commercial lettering as its inspiration, it is no revival, or pale imitation of past forms. This font can be as contemporary as you need it to be, or as retro, or somewhere in between. A wealth of sophisticated OpenType features lie beneath the bouncy exterior, making for a versatile script font that performs well at headline sizes, but is also legible enough to set small amounts of copy.

Biscuit Boodle Ornaments are the ornament complement to Biscuit Boodle, a fun and uplifting brush-drawn script. Biscuit Boodle Ornaments offers a total of 72 vignettes, crests, fleurons, frames and many other useful ornaments. These ornaments were brush-drawn by Portland Studios‚ Illustrator Justin Gerard and have just a slight amount of natural texture. These energetic and lively ornaments can be resized and rotated easily without any loss of quality and can easily be converted to outlines and modified. Combine them to form unique compositions or insert them into text to add some excitement to your designs. Please see the sample .pdf to see all 72 ornaments in action.

The island of Fuerteventura is more known for its white sand beaches and windsurf-friendly constant winds than for its typographic marvels. Still, it's on the walls of a ballroom next to its white-sand beaches that Debora Manetti found the hand-painted letterforms that she took as inspiration for her typeface Sala de Fiestas. The resulting font was a condensed sans serif full of curious details and a jumpy latino vibe that many years after still keeps its freshness and vernacular charme. Francesco Canovaro took the original typeface as a starting point for a grand tour into sign-painter aesthetics, developing a reboot of the original into a new type family: Salad. While being faithful to the original proportions and feeling, Salad provides extreme versatility through its five-weights range, its extended charset and its set of Open Type features including stylistic sets, alternates, positional numerals, small capitals and case sensitive forms. While the roman family with its italic counterpart provide a good workhorse tool for informal branding, packaging and editorial projects, the interlocking and the inline weights add additional possibilities for display purposes. This is enriched by the inclusion in the typeface of a set hand-drawn decorative dingbats that further complement the sign painting vibe of the family. All Zetafonts expertise in handmade lettering, typographic design and water sports has been put to test to assure Salad is the best typographical alternative to a a trip to Canary Islands!

Based on the lettering used on Alan Turing’s famous code-breaking machine at Bletchley Park, the “Bombe”, and the subsequent British answer to the German Enigma machine, the Typex. Research done at Bletchley Park on their restored and antique machines provided the inspiration. The unusual shapes for the capitals have all been retained - the square O, the monospaced characters and other eccentricities that make it unique. This reference material was then extended to the numerals (which did not exist in the original) and a full international character complement. The initial design of the bombe was produced in 1939 at the UK Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park by Alan Turing, with an important refinement devised in 1940 by Gordon Welchman. It was based on a device that had been designed in 1938 in Poland at the Biuro Szyfrów (Cipher Bureau) by cryptologist Marian Rejewski, and known as the "cryptologic bomb" (Polish: bomba kryptologiczna). The Bombe was used to break the German Enigma code on a daily basis, and was a vital part of the Allied war effort. The British “Typex" (alternatively, Type X or TypeX) machines were an adaptation of the commercial German Enigma with a number of enhancements that greatly increased its security. It was used from 1937 until the mid-1950s, when other more modern military encryption systems came into use.

Cephalonia is a geometric sans-serif with a unique set of alternates that draw their inspiration from classical greek engravings. The crossbars in the alt characters O, E, F and D are the most notable examples of this greek influence. The landscape of Greece and in particular its islands were the inspiration behind the angular A, H and G, which conjure images of rolling hills and waves. Cephalonia's alternate Q and ampersand are completely original designs. Cephalonia combines the simplicity and elegance of the most famous geometric sans-serifs while adding original embellishments that make it something new and exciting. The end result is a typeface that can evoke a classic feeling while simultaneously holding an edgy contemporary feel.

Songs of the early 1900s were anything but the status quo in topic or style. Excessively long titles, novelty tunes and "foreign themes" permeated the piles of sheet music in the local music shops. 1916's "Oh How She Could Yacki Hacki Wicki Wacki Woo (That's Love in Honolu)" covered a number of these quirks within one publication. This Hawaiian-tinged song evoked the mysterious ways of the South Seas islands, despite the abridging of Honolulu to "Honolu". Nonetheless, the hand lettered title of this particular piece of sheet music featured an Art Nouveau-influenced bold block letter with rounded corners. It's now available digitally as Smooth Sailing JNL, in both regular and oblique versions.

The designer-favorite Blue Goblet family has grown with the addition of Blue Goblet Florals. Blue Goblet Florals are flowing and abstract ornaments that resemble foliage or flowers rendered in Cory Godbey's unique illustration style. These fresh and lively foliage inspired ornaments can be resized easily without any loss of quality, and can easily be converted to outlines and modified. These floral ornaments can be combined to form unique compositions or inserted directly into layouts. Please see the sample .pdf to see all 55 floral ornaments in action, and be sure to check out the original Blue Goblet brush script and Blue Goblet ornaments, frames and vignettes. Blue Goblet Florals is a collaboration between insigne Design and Portland Studios.

Ronde Script (Ronde meaning "A kind of script in which the heavy strokes are nearly upright, giving the characters when taken together a round look.") is based on the original design named Parisian Ronde released in 1878 by the Chappelle Foundry in Paris. Other versions of this script include Inland French Script, French Script, French Plate, and Typo Upright. Different type foundries tied to the releases of this design include Mayeur (Paris), Stephenson Blake (London), Bernhardt Brothers & Spindler (Chicago), and ATF (Elizabeth, NJ). This style of script has been a very popular choice in designing wedding invitations and so many other formal announcements for over 130 years. Its very readable, formal and elegant with an antique or retro feel.