Inspired by traditional old Biblical type, this font has a rich and unique style, with modern touch.

A revival of one of the popular wooden type fonts of the 19th century, suitable for text.

One of the classic display types of the 19th century, an Egyptian with bracketed serifs. Quite bold.

A revival of one of the popular wooden type fonts of the 19th century, suitable for display.

MOTORWAY is the companion typeface to TRANSPORT, the British road sign lettering. The Motorway alphabet was created for the route numbers on motorway signage, and is taller and narrower than the accompanying place names and distances which are printed in Transport. However, for Motorway Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert created only the numbers 0 to 9, the capitals A, B, E, M, N, S and W, ampersand, slash, parentheses and a comma. So, although the lettering made its first appearance on the Preston bypass in 1958, K-Type Motorway is the first complete typeface and contains all upper and lower case letters, plus a full complement of punctuation, symbols and Latin Extended-A accented characters. As with the Transport alphabet the starting point was Akzidenz Grotesk, Motorway taking inspiration from condensed versions. Changes were mainly driven by a quest for legibility, resulting in some reduced contrast between horizontal and vertical strokes, and Gill-esque straight diagonal limbs on the 6 and 9, and high vertex for the M. Kinneir and Calvert designed the limited range of characters in two weights; a SemiBold 'Permanent' weight for use as white letters on blue motorway signs, and a Bold 'Temporary' weight for heavier black letters on yellow non-permanent signage. In addition to creating full fonts in both original weights, the K-Type family adds a new Regular weight, plus a set of italics, completing a highly usable condensed typeface which, while rooted in history, is fully functional for both print and web usage. The K-Type fonts are spaced and kerned normally, simply increase the tracking to recapture the generous spacing of motorway signage.

A type designed in a grid, like on display panels Type is not only printed. There were always and still are a number of forms of type versions which function completely differently. Even very early in the history of script there were attempts to combine a few single elements into the diverse forms of individual characters and also efforts to construct the forms of letters within a geometric grid system. The “instructions” of Albrecht Dürer are probably most well-known. But although designers of past centuries assumed the ideal to basically be an artist’s handwritten script, the idea which developed in the course of mechanization was to “build” characters in a building block system only by stringing together one basic element — the so-called grid type was discovered, represented most commonly today by »pixel types.« But even before computers, there were display systems which presented types with the help of a mechanical grid display, like the display panels in public transportation (bus, train) or at airports and train stations. In a streetcar, I met up with a modern variation of this display which reveals the name of each tram stop as it is approached. This system was based on a customary coarse square grid, but the individual squares were also divided again diagonally in four triangles. In this way it is possible to display slants and to simulate round forms more accurately as with only squares. The displayed characters still aren’t comparable to a decent typeface — on the contrary, the lower case letters are surprisingly ugly — but they form a much more legible type than that of ordinary [quadrate] grid types. DeDisplay from ingoFonts is this kind of type, constructed from tiny triangles which are in turn grouped in small squares. The stem widths are formed by two squares; the height of upper case characters is 10, the x-height 7 squares. DeDisplay is available in three versions: DeDisplay 1 is the complex original with spaces between the triangles, DeDisplay 2 forgoes dividing the triangles and thus appears somewhat darker or “bold,” and DeDisplay 3 is to some extent the “black” and doesn’t even include spaces between the individual squares.

Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813) was called the King of Printers; he was a prolific type designer, a masterful engraver of punches and the most widely admired printer of his time. His books and typefaces were created during the 45 years he was the director of the fine press and publishing house of the Duke of Parma in Italy. He produced the best of what are known as "modern" style types, basing them on the finest writing of his time. Modern types represented the ultimate typographic development of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They have characteristics quite different from the types that preceded them; such as extreme vertical stress, fine hairlines contrasted by bold main strokes, and very subtle, almost non-existent bracketing of sharply defined hairline serifs. Bodoni saw this style as beautiful and harmonious-the natural result of writing done with a well-cut pen, and the look was fashionable and admired. Other punchcutters, such as the Didot family (1689-1853) in France, and J. E. Walbaum (1768-1839) in Germany made their own versions of the modern faces. Even though some nineteenth century critics turned up their noses and called such types shattering and chilly, today the Bodoni moderns are seen in much the same light as they were in his own time. When used with care, the Bodoni types are both romantic and elegant, with a presence that adds tasteful sparkle to headlines and advertising. The Bauer Bodoni was done by Heinrich Jost for Bauer Typefoundry in 1927. This version has finer details of the original Bodoni types. It works well for headlines, logos, advertising.

Cove is a very modern wide type design sure to jazz up what ever you use it on.

a free digitization of ancient types of Ottaviano Scotus, from incunabula times, printed in Germany by Anton Koberger

A revival of an unusual wooden type font of the 19th century, a sans serif, suitable for display.

A revival of one of the popular wooden type fonts of the 19th century, extra bold, slab Antique.

A compressed wood poster type from the mid-1800s. Certainly handy for excessive copy on a single line.

Adelon Serial is a classic flare serif typeface. Use it for titling, packaging, and other types of headlines.

An elegant take on Bodoni, with its subtle flared serifs that give it a very beautiful distinguished look.