Maclean's is a weekly Canadian newsmagazine with a broad editorial mission. A typical issue covers everything from violence on the other side of the globe to the largest pumpkin grown in a local county. In 2001, Maclean's invited Rod McDonald to become part of the design team to renovate" the 96-year-old publication. The magazine wanted to offer its readers a typographic voice that was professional, clean, and easy to read. Above all, the typeface had to be able to speak about the hundreds of unrelated subjects addressed in each issue while remaining believable and uncontrived. A tall order, perhaps? Now add in that this would be the first text typeface ever commissioned by a Canadian magazine. McDonald, who some have called Canada's unofficial "typographer laureate," took on the challenge. McDonald used two historic models as the basis for Laurentian's design: the work of French type designer Claude Garamond, and that of the English printer and type founder, William Caslon. From Garamond Laurentian acquired its humanist axis, crisp serifs and terminals that mimic pen strokes. Caslon's letters are less humanistic, with a more marked contrast in stroke weight and serifs that appear constructed rather than drawn. These traits also made their mark on Laurentian. Using these two designs as a foundation, McDonald drew Laurentian with the narrow text columns and small type sizes of magazine composition in mind. He gave his letters strong vertical strokes and sturdy serifs, a robust x-height and a slightly compressed character width A tall order, per McDonald's genius is evident in the face's legibility, quiet liveliness and in the openness of the letters. The result is a typeface that not only met Maclean's demanding design brief, but also provides exceptional service in a wide variety of other applications. Laurentian is available in three weights of Regular, Semi Bold and Bold, with complementary italics for the Regular and Semi Bold, and a suite of titling caps."

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

Buffet Script is based on fantastic calligraphy by Alf Becker, arguably the greatest American sign lettering artist of all time. The Alf Becker series of nameless alphabets published by Sign of the Times magazine in 1941 has attracted letter digitizers for a few years now, so it’s really a wonder that a few of those alphabets are still in the non-digital realm. It is understandable, though, that the basis for Buffet Script was not digitally attempted until now. The page presenting this alphabet shows a jungle of letters running into each others and swashes intertwining. The massive amount of work involved in digitizing such lettering, where scanning is nowhere near being an option, is quite obvious at a mere glance. If anyone was going to commit this particular alphabet to a digital form, it would have to be redrawn stroke by stroke and curve by curve on the computer. And don't we love a challenge! But seriously, the challenge was not the main attraction. In a way, the Becker approach to lettering is so far from digital that the imagination is almost forced to work out possibilities and letter combinations to solve problems presented by the scant showings in that magazine. After a few imaginative visualizations, the digital potential becomes clear in the mind, and the eye and hand follow. The result with Whomp (another Alf Becker-inspired work) was an enormous font with a lot of alternates and ligatures. With Buffet Script the imaginative process was no different, but the result particularly shines here, because this is some of the most fascinating flowing calligraphy ever seen. Calligraphy is where the accountability of all the little extra touches, such as alternates and swashes and ligatures, is raised to a higher level than in most other type categories. Buffet Script’s OpenType programming contains discretionary ligatures, stylistic and contextual alternates, interacting with each other to allow the composition of just the right word or sentence. This font is best used where lush elegance is one of the design’s requirements.

The Englishman William Caslon punchcut many roman, italic, and non-Latin typefaces from 1720 until his death in 1766. At that time most types were being imported to England from Dutch sources, so Caslon was influenced by the characteristics of Dutch types. He did, however, achieve a level of craft that enabled his recognition as the first great English punchcutter. Caslon's roman became so popular that it was known as the script of kings, although on the other side of the political spectrum (and the ocean), the Americans used it for their Declaration of Independence in 1776. The original Caslon specimen sheets and punches have long provided a fertile source for the range of types bearing his name. Identifying characteristics of most Caslons include a cap A with a scooped-out apex; a cap C with two full serifs; and in the italic, a swashed lowercase v and w. Caslon's types have achieved legendary status among printers and typographers, and are considered safe, solid, and dependable. Caslon Antique was designed by Berne Nadall and brought out by the American type foundry Barnhart Bros & Spindler in 1896 to 1898. It doesn't bear any resemblance to Caslon, but has the quaint crudeness of what people imagine type looked like in the eighteenth century. Use Caslon Antique for that old-timey" effect in graphic designs. It looks best in large sizes for titles or initials. Caslon Black was designed by David Farey in the 1990s, and consists of one relatively narrow and very black weight. It is intended exclusively for titles or headlines. Caslon Black has a hint of the original Caslon lurking in the shadows of its shapes, but has taken on its own robust expression. Caslon Graphique was designed by Leslie Usherwood in the 1980s. The basic forms are close to the original Caslon, but this version has wide heavy forms with very high contrast between the hairline thin strokes and the fat main strokes. This precisely drawn and stylized Caslon has verve; it's ideal for headlines or initials in large sizes."

A ”modern“ Gothic – designed according to principles of modern form in three variations Faber Gotik is a reminiscence of Gutenberg’s first script from around 1450. The heavily broken forms allow further development in the direction of a modern, strongly geometric and less formal type. It should be possible to push the principle of design so far to the limit that a type is created which, from the very start, extinguishes reminders of a dark past. The characters are composed of squares which are lined up straight or in a more or less slanted manner. The resulting corners similar to serifs were removed so that a sans serif type in the true sense without up and down strokes was created. The principle of ”breaking“ was applied according to the historical model. Even the form of the characters is based on the model from the Middle Ages. Only the characters which cannot be created with the principle described were modeled on today's forms. Faber Gotik includes three variations: - Faber Gotik Text — most similar to the historical model - Faber Gotik Gothic — pushes the applied principle of form the furthest - Faber Gotik Capitals —; a Gothic upper case font, contrary to tradition. 555 years after Gutenberg, interest in black-letter typefaces is nearly extinct. They are especially looked down upon in German-speaking countries because they are still associated with ”Nazi“ scripts. But yet, the very forms of blackletter, Gothic, Schwabacher and especially cursive have enormous potential with regard to the development of new advanced font forms.

Juxta Sans Mono is an experimental monospace sans, an extension of the Juxta superfamily. During the creation of the Juxta script, I felt that the aesthetics and the main idea of the font had promising potential and I started thinking about a pair for it. So the idea of Juxta Sans Mono was formulated. Juxta has several style-forming elements: 45° beveled or cross out bowls, squared m and w arcs and other unobvious letter structures. Despite its unusual and sometimes odd (f, g, m) letterforms, Juxta Sans is fairly easy to read due to its monospace font nature and wide spacing. Juxta Sans Mono offers great customization potential. It has two sets of stylistic alternates — [salt] makes a letter underscored, but keep it in line, [ss01] replaces some of the glyphs with different letterforms. The [case] function automatically adjusts the height of the punctuation marks to the neighbor letter and [onum] is a set of old style numbers. Juxta Sans Mono also has subscript and superscript features, but they are utilized a bit unconventionally — if you want to customize your logo or headline, you can make a glyph superscript and the one next to it subscript and they automatically kern into one letter width. You can see examples of using these features in the presentation. Juxta Sans Mono is available in 8 weights, including Thin, Light, Regular, Medium, SemiBold, Bold, ExtraBold and Black. It extends multilingual support to Basic Latin, Western European, Euro, Catalan, Baltic, Turkish, Central European, Pan African Latin, Afrikaans, and Basic Cyrillic.

Here in the heart of Santa Monica, in the disused 1940s aircraft hangar we like to call the Comicraft Studios, we know that times are tough. As we were driving to “work” in the back of our chauffeur driven Humvee limo, sipping martinis out of the navels of Playboy bunnies and wondering what font we should release next, we decided it was time to reach out to the poor people. Yes, we felt it was time to create a font for the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, for the wretched refuse of our teeming shores. A font, if you will, for the tempest-tossed. It’s a little skinny and might be described as pinched and starved, but it’s guaranteed to see you through this current economic crisis as only the 26 letters of the alphabet can. It was a tall order, but Jazzy JG Roshell created this one while he was in line at the bank, waiting for his personal bailout. Meticulously crafted using one of those ballpoint pens attached to the cashier’s station by elastic, Credit Crunch is the Hamburger Helper of comic book fonts. It’s kind of a hybrid -- just like the Priuses our trophy wives drive to their personal plastic surgeons -- and it’s solar powered and also comes with a tank full of good old fashioned Biro ink. The Recession, Climate Change AND Global Hunger will probably end mere minutes after you crack open your life’s savings to buy this font. How can you afford NOT to...? See the families related to Credit Crunch: Credit Extension.

We popped the Doohickey into the Framistat and out popped this Whatchamacallit! Is it fat? is it thin? Is it tall? Is it short? Is it light? Is it heavy? Is it condensed?! is it expanded?! Yes, yes, yes and yes -- It’s all of the above and more! Our resident mad scientist John “Mr. Fontastic” Roshell has developed a single contraption that can handle any design emergency, from crimelords to supervillain team-ups to alien invasions. Whatchamacallit is a friendly and readable sans-serif, inspired by some of our all-time favorites -- Gill Sans, Futura, Venus and Antique Olive. But, like its machinery-contraption namesakes Doohickey and Framistat, Whatchamacallit has a lively personality -- the strokes are a little wavy, the ends a bit bulbous, and the circles are like little loaves of bread, rising in the Whatchamacallit's oven... delicious!

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

Did you ever draw something with you finger in milk that has been just spilled on the table?

Antique Ornaments JNL collects twenty-six vintage printers' ornaments from the 1800s into one convenient digital font file.

Enjoy this one-of-a-kind custom creation from Chuck Davis. Beautiful curves make it a must have.

Adrenalin font for the most daring and uncompromising projects. Rock, extreme, drive, fear. Based on the famous series.

Lingotto Black is a geometric display font based on a square module, inspired by early ’70s Italian lettering.

Printing Press Designs JNL accumulates various vintage embellishments, ornaments, border elements and miscellaneous designs into one handy collection.

A very graphic font with emphasis on legibility, dynamics and modern. Very suitable for a variety of applications.