Useful links: Using the variable font TT Alientz in InDesign About TT Alientz: TT Alientz is a variable* typeface that allows the user to make a visual journey from a laconic extraterrestrial grotesque to a very prickly display serif. As part of this project, we decided to investigate the influence of a foreign substance and the consequent transformation of the original forms, which ultimately leads to extreme visual changes. The TT Alientz family consists of 3 fonts: grotesque, serif and variable* font. Each font contains more than 470 glyphs. In addition to broad language support (including Cyrillic), the typeface has stylish ligatures, contextual alternates, and old-style figures. Variability in the typeface affects the changes in the overall style of the font—moving the slider to adjust the variable axis, you can go from a laconic grotesque to an extreme serif. TT Alientz Grotesque is a fairly neat hipster grotesque, but with its own small features. In the design of some letters of the grotesque you can find small sharp elements that add uniqueness and character to the font when used in large inscriptions and headings. At the same time, when you use the font in a small size of the size and in text blocks, sharp elements do not greatly affect its readability. The design of some letters of the grotesque is quite peculiar and is intended to emphasize the initial concept of slight 'alienness'. TT Alientz Serif is an 'infected' TT Alientz Grotesque and the result of changes to it. Unlike the grotesque, the serif is dynamic, viscous, ductile and very prickly. Serif has a lot of smooth lines and not quite standard strokes contrast. It can be noted that most serifs in the antiqua are pointed inward, not outward. Despite its extremeness, the serif will look good both in large and in small body sizes. *An important clarification regarding variable fonts. At the moment, not all graphic editors, programs and browsers support variable fonts. You can check the status of support for the variability of your software here: v-fonts.com/support/ FOLLOW US: Instagram | Facebook | Website TT Alientz supports more than 160+ languages, such as: Acehnese, Afar, Albanian, Alsatian, Aragonese, Arumanian, Asu, Aymara, Banjar, Basque, Belarusian (cyr), Bemba, Bena, Betawi, Bislama, Boholano, Bosnian (cyr), Bosnian (lat), Breton, Bulgarian (cyr), Cebuano, Chamorro, Chiga, Colognian, Cornish, Corsican, Cree, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Embu, English, Erzya, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Gaelic, Gagauz (lat), Galician, German, Gusii, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiri Motu, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Innu-aimun, Interlingua, Irish, Italian, Javanese, Judaeo-Spanish, Judaeo-Spanish, Kabuverdianu, Kalenjin, Karachay-Balkar (lat), Karaim (lat), Karakalpak (lat), Kashubian, Khasi, Khvarshi, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kongo, Kumyk, Kurdish (lat), Ladin, Latvian, Laz, Leonese, Lithuanian, Luganda, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Macedonian, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Malay, Manx, Maori, Marshallese, Mauritian Creole, Minangkabau, Moldavian (lat), Montenegrin (cyr), Montenegrin (lat), Mordvin-moksha, Morisyen, Nahuatl, Nauruan, Ndebele, Nias, Nogai, Norwegian, Nyankole, Occitan, Oromo, Palauan, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rheto-Romance, Rohingya, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Russian, Rusyn, Rwa, Salar, Samburu, Samoan, Sango, Sangu, Scots, Sena, Serbian (cyr), Serbian (lat), Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Shona, Slovak, Slovenian, Soga, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Swiss German, Swiss German, Tagalog, Tahitian, Taita, Tatar, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Tsonga, Tswana, Turkish, Turkmen (lat), Ukrainian, Uyghur, Vepsian, Volapük, Võro, Vunjo, Walloon, Xhosa, Zaza, Zulu.

Whitenights is a contemporary text family, which was developed by the prolific Swedish typographer Lars Bergquist in 2002. Containing five weights (11 different fonts total), this family contains every tool you need to set splendid text. The base font of the family is Whitenights Regular, a reliable face designed in the old style manner. It ships in OpenType format, with old style figures. Whitenights Ligatures Regular is a supplementary font, which contains many extra ligatures (e.g., ffb, ffk, tt, and fj) whose use will improve the color" of a page of text set in Whitenights Regular. Whitenights Regular may be accented by combination with Whitenights Small Caps, Whitenights Italic, Whitenights Bold, and/or Whitenights Bold Italic. The Whitenights Italic, Bold and Bold Italic styles all have supplementary Ligature fonts available for purchase, similar to the Whitenights Ligatures Regular face described above. For larger, headline text, the specially designed Whitenights Titling is quite useful. This titling font has been optically redrawn and respaced for use in large sizes. Naturally, it has its own supplementary Ligature font as well. In books, magazines, and newsletters this font is a great display companion to the rest of the Whitenights family. Its use in conjunction with the text faces will make your typographical compositions more sophisticated. Last but not least in the Whitenights family is Whitenights Math, which contains many additional mathematical and logical glyphs not found in a standard font's character set. Used together, the above 12 styles can set almost any text or math-based document. The entire family is included in the Take Type 5 collection from Linotype GmbH."

The long awaited and much requested revival of Robert Hunter Middleton's very popular classic is finally here. Mayfair Cursive was an instant hit for Middleton in 1932, and it went on being used widely until late into the 1970s, in spite of it never having crossed over to film type technology. Like a few of its contemporary designs, most notably the work of Lucien Bernhard, Mayfair is a formal script that is somewhat based on traditional italic forms with swash uppercase, but also employs subsidiary hairline strokes in some of its lowercase as an emphasis to the script's cursive traits. Why these gorgeous letters never made the leap into photo typesetting is a mystery to us. But here they are now in digital form, almost three quarters of a century since they first saw the light in metal. Mayfair was redrawn from original 48 pt specimen. It also underwent a major expansion of character set. Plenty of swash characters and ligatures were added. An alternate set of lowercase was also made, in order to give the user a choice between connected and disconnected variations of the same elegant script. Mayfair ships in all popular font formats. While the Postscript Type 1 and True Type versions come in two fonts (Mayfair and Mayfair Alt), the OpenType version is a single font containing all the extra characters in conveniently programmed features that are easily accessible by OpenType-supporting software applications. We are quite sure today's graphic designers will be appreciative of having access to the face that all but defined menus, romance covers, wine and liquor labels and chocolate boxes for almost two 20th century generations.

ITC Greengate is the result of a time-traveling, intercontinental collaboration--one between 21st century South African designer Richard Every, and early 20th century Scottish artist Jessie Marion King. Jessie Marion King (1875-1949) began her professional career as a book designer and illustrator, but over time her creativity found its outlet in many forms, including posters, jewelry, ceramics, wallpaper, fabrics, murals, interior design and costumes. After eventually settling in Kirkcudbright, Scotland, she founded Green Gate Close, a center for women artists. Although her style is reminiscent of the Art Nouveau artist, Aubrey Beardsley, King's aesthetic was an offshoot of the “Glasgow Style,” a Scottish hybrid of the Arts and Crafts movement and Art Nouveau. Often, her illustrations included hand lettering. It was just this kind of lettering that gave Richard Every his inspiration for ITC Greengate. When he saw some children's book illustrations that King created in 1898, he knew on the spot he had to complete the hand lettering as a typographic font. He began working on the typeface in 1996, but it took six years to be released as an ITC typeface. Every simplified and harmonized King's letterforms slightly and, most importantly, added a suite of lowercase characters. The result is a somewhat earthy Art Nouveau design, with a character quite distinct from typical digital revivals. Every's career has been as diverse as King's. He was born in Durban, South Africa and studied graphic design at ML Sultan Technikon in Durban. He's been an art director, freelance designer, the owner and manager of a nightclub and co-manager of a South African band. “Through it all,” he says, “typography has always been one of my passions.”

Torcao is one of the sporks of the font universe, a useful and functional outlier. Half square, half circle, this uncommon squircle of a family with its asymmetry of curved and angular shapes drives through headlines and body copy with forward velocity. The robust, technical appearance is light-hearted and inviting, and its organic nature plays off of its one-of-a-kind kinks and hybrid forms. Torcao is not merely an experimental font, though. The figures have been crafted and refined into a functional, hard-working typeface that lends itself to many sizes and environments. The font family features a tall x-height and light modulation, which give the typography its unique color highly effective in headlines but still quite legible in longer text. This family contains a comprehensive range of nine weights--slender to black--and features condensed and extender selections for a complete set of forty-eight fonts. The font has been decked out for experienced typographers, together with swash alternates and simplified titling. The typeface also contains a range of numeral sets, together with fractions and old-style figures. OpenType-capable programs including Quark or the Adobe suite allow quick changes to ligatures and alternates. Previews of these options can be found in the .pdf brochure. Torcao also features the glyphs to enable all Central, Eastern, and Western European languages. In all, the font supports around forty languages that utilize the prolonged Latin script, making it an excellent option for multi-lingual publications and packaging. Simple, technical, and open, the Torcao type family could just be the perfect choice for your web type or print project.

Minotaur is an original monoline design based on an Oscan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscan_language ) votive inscription from the second century B.C.E. The letterforms immediately caught my eye in the wonderful book, Lettering by Hermann Degering, and I decided to create a typeface based on them with only enough compromises to make it usable as a modern alphabet. Not quite as straightforward as I had hoped. For example, the Oscan language (the predominant language in the Italian peninsula before the ascendance of Latin), has no letter "O", so the distinctive curve of the "D" was used as the model for the rounded letters "C" and "G" and more subtly for "O" and "Q"; this shape is also echoed in the original design of "B", "P" and "R". Also, the Oscan letterforms for A, K, L, M, N, S, and U are rather quaint, so I've included modern forms as alternates. Minotaur offers the best of both worlds: Just as the mythical Minotaur is half man and half bull, the font Minotaur is half modern and half ancient. Thanks to OpenType features (stylistic sets), you can easily switch from ancient letterforms to modern (if you have an OpenType-savvy application such as Adobe InDesign) for Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets. Minotaur supports all modern European languages, including Modern (monotonic) Greek and those that use the Cyrillic alphabet. And, yes, it supports Oscan, both right-facing and left-facing. Minotaur includes 3 OpenType Stylistic Sets: 1 - converts ancient (default) letterforms (A, K, L, M, N, S, and U) to modern alternates; 2 - converts Latin letterforms to equivalent left-facing (standard) Oscan letterforms; 3 - converts Latin letterforms to equivalent right-facing Oscan letterforms.

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.

Inheriting the beauty and style of old type classics from this genre, Jeles is blended with very elegant modern approach featuring soft corners, round slab serifs and tasty ball terminals. Jeles is designed mostly for display use and it is highly recommended to get the whole family if you want to get the best result. It is designed in two styles Condensed and Normal. The Condensed version is developed in two weights each coming with corresponding italics. While the Normal styles are three ranging from Regular, Bold and Black. The total of 7 separate fonts inside the family are quite enough if you look for diversity and flexibility at one place. You could use the uprights for more serious and strong headlines while the Italics work perfectly for more fresh and live subheads. Of course editorial design is only one of the many directions where Jeles family could be used successfully as we all know typefaces with so visible contrast between thin and thick and combined with classic elegance, could be easily used in every design of cosmetic industry, fashion, food, jewelry, etc. Try to design a stylish boutique shop signboard and you will surely discover its beauty and potential. Easy-to-read, it is good for print design, revealing its authentic letterpress-like character as well as perfect for screen use note that the thin strokes and serifs are not that thin to vanish on a low resolution monitor. Professionally designed, they are solid enough yet very elegant and even gentle making Jeles a desired family design of attractive web banners, web sites, apps and e-books.

These fonts just ooze Christmas and holiday spirit from every curve of every letter! If Kingthings Willowless Pro is a Christmas font, well... then Kingthings Willow Pro is a Christmas tree complete with decorations and lights! This font is sooooo ornamented - but still quite readable. I have cleaned up all the outlines, redesigned the F (which looked more like a J), tweaked some more letters and then expanded the font with the usual multilingual glyphs. I loved this font when I first saw it, but was very nervous that it would be difficult to design the accents - but it was a breeze! It has been one of the most enjoyable fonts to rework so far. Hope you will enjoy it, too. ALL fonts from CheapProFonts have very extensive language support: They contain some unusual diacritic letters (some of which are contained in the Latin Extended-B Unicode block) supporting: Cornish, Filipino (Tagalog), Guarani, Luxembourgian, Malagasy, Romanian, Ulithian and Welsh. They also contain all glyphs in the Latin Extended-A Unicode block (which among others cover the Central European and Baltic areas) supporting: Afrikaans, Belarusian (Lacinka), Bosnian, Catalan, Chichewa, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Esperanto, Greenlandic, Hungarian, Kashubian, Kurdish (Kurmanji), Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Maori, Polish, Saami (Inari), Saami (North), Serbian (latin), Slovak(ian), Slovene, Sorbian (Lower), Sorbian (Upper), Turkish and Turkmen. And they of course contain all the usual "western" glyphs supporting: Albanian, Basque, Breton, Chamorro, Danish, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Frisian, Galican, German, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish (Gaelic), Italian, Northern Sotho, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romance, Sami (Lule), Sami (South), Scots (Gaelic), Spanish, Swedish, Tswana, Walloon and Yapese.

Genovaite Baroniene is former school teacher and a native of Lithuania who loves fancy letters. When she writes, she likes to add extra flourishes to her handwriting and printing. It simply appeals to her to do so. While living in the United States a few years ago and working in the health care field, she put pen to paper to provide a specimen of her writing from which a font could be developed. The process has taken longer than either of us expected. Now we are finally able to present Baroniene ML, a stylishly unique example of what we call Lithuanian Folk Baroque. Baroniene ML has a total of 362 glyphs, including the Unicode Latin Extended-A glyphs (0100 to 017F), covering the more widely-used Central European languages. To resolve the cedilla/undercomma conundrum, we have chosen to design a hybrid disconnected accent for use with C, G, K, L, N, R, S & T. We hope this solution is acceptable to users of Albanian, Catalan, French, Latvian, Portuguese, Romanian and Turkish. Baroniene ML also comes with four ligatures: gh, Th, th and Ch (167, 172, 177 and 181). Baroniene ML is certainly not the polished script of a professional calligrapher. It is very personal. The human source is still visible in its form. The letter spacing is uneven. Some of the curves are not quite perfect. In sum, the individuality has not been refined out of it. That is why it is so charming. If you want for a font that has a very different look, perhaps Baroniene ML is what you need.

Simplo: the ‘Italian Futura’. Simplo is a geometric sans serif typeface, built in sixteen styles. It is a tribute to the 1930s typeface Semplicità, designed by Nebiolo’s Alessandro Butti. Although many details of Simplo differ from Semplicità, it preserves the spirit of the original. Simplo is ideal for use in display sizes. It is also quite legible in text, and is well suited for graphic design and corporate identity design. Simplo has sixteen styles, extensive language support, eight different kinds of figures, sophisticated OpenType features — so it’s ready for advanced typographic projects. The most notable characteristics of this typeface are the ‘t’ and the ‘f’. The ‘t’ is the culmination of simplicity: a vertical line with just a simple right-side crossbar. The ‘f’ also has just a right-side crossbar, and is really tall: it reaches both the highest and lowest vertical position of the typeface. The top of the distinctive ‘s’, is much narrower than its bottom. The ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘d’, ‘g’, ‘p’, ‘q’, and ‘u’ are spurless, and show a family resemblance with Hans Reichel’s 1990s typeface Dax. However, these letters are rounder and more geometric than Dax’s counterparts, because of Dax’s higher x-height and narrower design. In Paul Shaw’s Imprint article about typefaces that have been overlooked and/or underappreciated, “Overlooked Typefaces”, he concluded his discussion of Semplicità as follows: “These idiosyncrasies suggest that Semplicità might find a warm reception today, given the current love affair with Gotham, Neutraface and Proxima—and the resurgence of ITC Avant-Garde Gothic.” Free demo font available. For more information about Simplo, download the PDF Specimen Manual.

A stylistic and square outline font suitable for headlines and logos. The original font contained no diacritics at all, so I have designed these to match. I also made the descenders on "g/j/p/q/y" a bit longer - so they would balance better with the letters with diacritics below the letter... I redesigned the "t", but have included the original "t" as an alternate, available via your programs' glyph palette or using the OpenType functions "Stylistic Alternates"/"ss01". Genotype S BRK Pro is the perfect companion for Genotype H BRK Pro (The H stands for Hollow and the S stands for Solid). Can be used as a fill for its companion (using layers), but is also quite a usable font on its own. ALL fonts from CheapProFonts have very extensive language support: They contain some unusual diacritic letters (some of which are contained in the Latin Extended-B Unicode block) supporting: Cornish, Filipino (Tagalog), Guarani, Luxembourgian, Malagasy, Romanian, Ulithian and Welsh. They also contain all glyphs in the Latin Extended-A Unicode block (which among others cover the Central European and Baltic areas) supporting: Afrikaans, Belarusian (Lacinka), Bosnian, Catalan, Chichewa, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Esperanto, Greenlandic, Hungarian, Kashubian, Kurdish (Kurmanji), Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Maori, Polish, Saami (Inari), Saami (North), Serbian (latin), Slovak(ian), Slovene, Sorbian (Lower), Sorbian (Upper), Turkish and Turkmen. And they of course contain all the usual "western" glyphs supporting: Albanian, Basque, Breton, Chamorro, Danish, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Frisian, Galican, German, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish (Gaelic), Italian, Northern Sotho, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romance, Sami (Lule), Sami (South), Scots (Gaelic), Spanish, Swedish, Tswana, Walloon and Yapese.

VAROGE SARO NOEST arrives on your computer with OpenType replacement features standard, along with extended language support for Central European, Greek, Cyrillic and Extended Cyrillic. We've even included some nice character options for our German-speaking customers with the uppercase Eszett and a number of alternatives to the standard lowercase eszett. Also included is the new Turkish Lira. VAROGE SARO NOEST is a font with a very funny name. Sometimes it can be a funny font. Or a font that is fun. It looks kinda casual, but also a little bit handwritten--freeform and freehand. Or a form of block lettering with a rough edge. Not too rough. Just enough to break up the visual rigidity. But this is not a face in distress. It's mostly at ease in its surroundings. If it's in text mode, it handles the job comfortably. In headline mode it does well too. It's quite flexible and looking for a home. Give this font a home. See if you can figure out what to use it for. See if you see what we saw when we made it. We saw a font that's cool and elegant with a bit of a tantrum driving the node count. We also found it's impossible to look away from it. Anyone can see that. That's why you're here. That's why you're reading this. And VAROGE will do you a favor if you let it. Revisit your typographic beliefs and head over to the one persistent constant in life: your font list. Is VAROGE SARO NOEST on it? If it were to set up headquarters there, you might discover something ideal. That's the favor I was promising.

In 1995, FontHaus came upon a rare opportunity to create a revival of Aries, a little known and previously unavailable typeface by the legendary Eric Gill. Discovering a lost typeface by one of the major designers of the 20th Century, was the discovery of a buried treasure, and being the first type company to release it was an honor. Thirteen years later, FontHaus came across another little known typeface treasure: Diane. Designed by the legendary French designer Roger Excoffon in 1956, this remarkable script has never been faithfully recreated until now. In close collaboration with Mark Simonson, FontHaus and Mr. Simonson painstakingly researched rare type books, publications, European metal type services, and period showings from the United States, England, Germany and from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Finding full specimens of the font turned out to be quite a challenge. In most cases, only the caps and lowercase were shown. Furthermore, the more we researched Diane, many curious facts came to light. The caps in earlier specimens of Diane are completely different from specimens published later, suggesting that the face was redesigned at some point, perhaps in the mid-1960s. So we are left with two different sets of caps. The original had very elaborate, swirly strokes, very characteristic of Excoffon¹s gestural designs for posters and logos. Later on, these appear to have been replaced by a set of simpler, more traditional script caps. The original caps are criticized in one source Mark found (Practical Handbook on Display Typefaces, 1959) as being "exquisite" but "not highly legible". Perhaps this is what led to the simpler caps being introduced. Nevertheless, FontHaus's release includes not only both sets of caps, but a range of alternates and a number of new characters not originally available such as the Euro, and a magnificent alternate Ampersand to name a few.

Circe Rounded is an extension for a popular Circe typeface, with rounded terminals. Bold and ExtraBold faces have two variants with different radius of the roundings. Circe Rounded is even more friendly than the original Circe. The typeface is designed by Alexandra Korolkova and Alexander Lubovenko and released by ParaType in 2015. It is known that the Circe typeface is distinguished by mild and humanist nature being formally a geometric sans-serif. However, as an experiment we decided to make it even softer: Circe now has a version with rounded terminals — Circe Rounded. Rounding is generally regarded as a mechanical operation, but in this case a lot of manual adjustment was needed because of the humanist nature and peculiarities of type design. Moreover, the two bold styles now have two options: a basic one is slightly rounded and an alternate one is fully rounded. In Circe Rounded we decided to dismiss characters with swashes that are rather inappropriate in such a rounded font, but the stylistic sets and alternate characters are remaining. Rounded terminals make an open and friendly typeface even more childish. For example, in quite large point sizes (because the x-height is still not big) it can be used as a body type in infant books. Circe Rounded, similar to Circe, has alternative forms of lowercase characters, which are called “infant” and are used in publications for children’s reading. However, a humanist basis is preserved alongside with its softness and it does not allow it to be as “plasticine” as many other rounded fonts. Two of the most obvious areas of possible application of Circe Rounded are everything for children and everything edible, especially all that is sweet and puff. However, we believe that there are other options.

The engraver’s sans serif—strikingly similar to drafting alphabets of the early 1900s—has been one of the most widely used stationer’s lettering styles since about 1900. Its open, simple forms offer legibility at very small sizes. While there are digital fonts based on this style (such as Burin Sans™ and Sackers Gothic™, among others), few offer the range of styles and weights possible, with the versatility designers perhaps expect from digital type families. Sweet Sans fills that void. The family is based on antique engraver’s lettering templates called “masterplates.” Professional stationers use a pantograph to manually transfer letters from these masterplates to a piece of copper or steel that is then etched to serve as a plate or die. This demanding technique is rare today given that most engravers now use a photographic process to make plates, where just about any font will do. But the lettering styles engravers popularized during the first half of the twentieth century—especially the engraver’s sans—are still quite familiar and appealing. Referencing various masterplates—which typically offer the alphabet, figures, an ampersand, and little else—Mark van Bronkhorst has drawn a comprehensive toolkit of nine weights, each offering upper- and lowercase forms, small caps, true italics, arbitrary fractions, and various figure sets designed to harmonize with text, small caps, and all-caps. The fonts are available as basic, Standard character sets, and as Pro character sets offering a variety of typographic features and full support for Western and Central European languages. Though rich in history, Sweet Sans is made for contemporary use. It is a handsome and functional tribute to the spirit of unsung craftsmanship. Burin Sans and Sackers Gothic are trademarks of Monotype Imaging.

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. This version of Bodoni was done by Morris Fuller Benton for American Typefounders between 1907 and 1911. Although some of the finer details of the original Bodoni types are missing, this family has the high contrast and vertical stress typical of modern types. It works well for headlines, logos, advertising, and text."

The Journal Sans typeface was developed in the Type Design Department of SPA of Printing Machinery in Moscow in 1940–1956 by the group of designers under Anatoly Schukin. It was based on Erbar Grotesk by Jacob Erbar and Metro Sans by William A. Dwiggins, the geometric sans-serifs of the 1920s with the pronounced industrial spirit. Journal Sans, Rublenaya (Sans-Serif), and Textbook typefaces were the main Soviet sans-serifs. So no wonder that it was digitized quite early, in the first half of 1990s. Until recently, Journal Sans consisted of three faces and retained all the problems of early digitization, such as inaccurate curves or side-bearings copied straight from metal-type version. The years of 2013 and 2014 made «irregular» geometric sans-serifs trendy, and that fact affected Journal Sans. In the old version curves were corrected and the character set was expanded by Olexa Volochay. In the new release, besides minor improvements, a substantial work has been carried out to make the old typeface work better in digital typography and contemporary design practice. Maria Selezeneva significantly worked over the design of some glyphs, expanded the character set, added some alternatives, completely changed the side-bearings and kerning. Also, the Journal Sans New has several new faces, such as true italic (the older font had slanted version for the italic), an Inline face based on the Bold, and the Display face with proportions close to the original Erbar Grotesk. The new version of Journal Sans, while keeping all peculiarities and the industrial spirit of 1920s-1950s, is indeed fully adapted to the modern digital reality. It can be useful either for bringing historical spirit into design or for modern and trendy typography, both in print and on screen. Designed by Maria Selezeneva with the participation of Alexandra Korolkova. Released by ParaType in 2014.

Eksja is a modern slab serif available in four weights, each with a corresponding italic. All the fonts in the family have small caps, the extended latin character set, diacritical f-ligatures, enclosed numerals (numbers in circles) and case-sensitive punctuation. The general design of the typeface has been with a strong human touch in mind. The ends of the serifs have been given a subtle rounding, just enough to take the edge off which, when coupled with the largely humanist structure of the design, creates an open, friendly and approachable design, abandoning the usual geometric severity commonly associated with slab serif typefaces. Eksja contains quite a comprehensive numerals system. Obviously, each font has the standard proportionally and tabularly spaced lining and old-style figures but, crucially, the tabular numerals share the exact same width in each font variant. That means that you can choose to use the thin, regular, bold, black and their italic forms all in the same setting and they will always line up. In addition to the 'normal' numerals there are super-script and sub-script numerals and OpenType fractions that can be automatically composed as you type. There are also the enclosed numerals, numbers inside a circle, that are useful for numerically listing items and, thanks to the wizardry of OpenType, they can contain any number of digits (typically, enclosed numerals are precomposed single digits, only encompassing the 0–9 range, the enclosed numerals in Eksja can go to double digits, triple digits or, in fact, any number of digits*). *The automation of the enclosed numerals is accessed via either "Stylistic Set #1" or "Stylistic Alternates" which requires the use of an application that supports OpenType stylistic sets or stylistic alternates, such as Adobe's InDesign or Photoshop.

Some 40 km north of Helsinki, surrounded by meadows and a serene Finnish lake, lies Ainola, the former home and now museum of composer Jean Sibelius (1865–1957). I know the place quite well, since it is only a stone’s throw away from the art school where I began my graphic design studies. We sometimes went there after classes—a beautiful walk, especially in spring, when the days were getting longer, the snow melting in the sun and the ice cracking on the lake. The composer often professed his love for this landscape and found constant inspiration in its moods, sounds and scents during different seasons. For many people, Sibelius and his music, most notably his famous symphonic poem Finlandia, are a symbol of Finland. I decided to name the typeface family I’m presenting here FinlandiaScript, because it owes its influence to both Sibelius’ manuscripts and the Finnish landscape around Ainola. The shape of letters, their poise and the rhythm they create resemble Sibelius’ handwriting without copying it. The letters form gently flowing lines of text which is legible without giving up individuality. The font family comes in three styles: FinlandiaScript, FinlandiaScript Bold and FinlandiaScript Frost. Together they are perfect for magazines, websites and brands aiming to create a personal and sincere image. While the fine details of FinlandiaScript Frost are best suitable for display sizes, FinlandiaScript and FinlandiaScript Bold work well in both headlines and texts of smaller sizes. Hundreds of ligatures give them an especially flexible appearance. The FinlandiaScript family contains Western, Central European and Extended Cyrillic character sets and supports almost 100 languages. It is best suited for Opentype savvy programs with the “standard ligatures” and “contextual alternates” features turned on.

I fell in love at the age of twelve in Wales, recalls Bernard Philpot. "My father brought me to a small graveyard in the Welsh hills to show me two headstones carved by the great Eric Gill. I instantly fell in love with the beauty of the carving and the perfection of the letterforms. I still go back to marvel at these works of art." However, the ITC Bolthole™ design, Philpot's first commercial typographic endeavor, is quite unlike the works of Eric Gill that first captured his heart. Bolthole is a craggy sans serif with a definite grumpy attitude. It's not terribly legible, and, if more than a few words are set in the design, it's not very readable. To round out its cranky personality, Bolthole does not like to be set in small sizes. Like Cheez Whiz® and bullfights, you either love or hate this typeface. But whichever emotion dominates, there is no denying that Bolthole has a personality to be reckoned with - one with ample magnetism to ensure reader attraction. If used to set brief blocks of display copy, the typeface makes a powerful statement. Bolthole was originally designed to complement a whimsical ad for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. As Philpot recalls, "although the ad didn't win any awards, the type attracted some very positive comments for its original look and feel." Philpot studied graphic design and typography at the London School of Printing, and soon after graduation found himself working in a large advertising agency in London. According to Philpot, "After designing type for everything from packaging to ads, I thought it time to convert one of my designs into a complete font - and Bolthole was born." ITC Bolthole could very well be the Shrek™ of typeface design - which might not be such a bad thing."

The engraver’s sans serif—strikingly similar to drafting alphabets of the early 1900s—has been one of the most widely used stationer’s lettering styles since about 1900. Its open, simple forms offer legibility at very small sizes. While there are digital fonts based on this style (such as Burin Sans™ and Sackers Gothic™, among others), few offer the range of styles and weights possible, with the versatility designers perhaps expect from digital type families. Sweet Sans fills that void. The family is based on antique engraver’s lettering templates called “masterplates.” Professional stationers use a pantograph to manually transfer letters from these masterplates to a piece of copper or steel that is then etched to serve as a plate or die. This demanding technique is rare today given that most engravers now use a photographic process to make plates, where just about any font will do. But the lettering styles engravers popularized during the first half of the twentieth century—especially the engraver’s sans—are still quite familiar and appealing. Referencing various masterplates—which typically offer the alphabet, figures, an ampersand, and little else—Mark van Bronkhorst has drawn a comprehensive toolkit of nine weights, each offering upper- and lowercase forms, small caps, true italics, arbitrary fractions, and various figure sets designed to harmonize with text, small caps, and all-caps. The fonts are available as basic, Standard character sets, and as Pro character sets offering a variety of typographic features and full support for Western and Central European languages. Though rich in history, Sweet Sans is made for contemporary use. It is a handsome and functional tribute to the spirit of unsung craftsmanship. Burin Sans and Sackers Gothic are trademarks of Monotype Imaging.

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. Parma was designed by the monotype Design Team after studying Bodoni's steel punches at the Museo Bodoniana in Parma, Italy. They also referred to specimens from the "Manuale Tipografico," a monumental collection of Bodoni's work published by his widow in 1818.

Cute FS Kitty is the type equivalent of Bagpuss: plump, cute, cuddly and not fond of exercise. So don’t go giving it a run-out on body copy; FS Kitty is an all-caps font made for showing off in posters and headlines, and on products, point-of sale and especially sweets. Blubber Kitty had been quietly curled up in Phil Garnham’s sketchbook for a year before he brought it out to be brushed up. “It was in the mix as a basic form when I started thinking about FS Lola. It was a twisted, bubbly beauty – quite squishable and huggable. The working file was called Blubber. “At that time it was a basic construction of strokes. I created the ‘A’ first, purely as a shape to play with, not as type. I flipped it for ‘V’, and copied that for a ‘W’. I flipped the ‘W’ for an ‘M’... I thought, ‘This looks a bit wacky, but I like it,’ and just carried on. The most tricky characters were the ‘B’ ‘P’ and ‘R’. I must have drawn about 20 kinds of B for this, just to get it to fit.” Variety “When the regular weight of Kitty had been designed,” says Jason Smith, “it just felt like a natural progression to go on and explore how far we could go with it: Light, Solid, Headline, Shadow.” Phil Garnham thinks there’s still more to come. “There are some really individual characters in this font that I think have yet to be exploited: the Greek Omega symbol, the strange face in the ampersand. Like Bagpuss, Kitty has kept a low profile so far. “We know people are using Kitty. In fact, it was the first of any of our fonts that we sold on the day it was released. But I still haven’t seen it out there in the wild. It’s going to be a exciting moment.”

Malabar is a type family for extensive text. Its design was developed with a nod toward newspapers. Malabar's characters are seriffed and of the Old Style genre. A strong diagonal axis is apparent within the curves. Sturdy serifs help strengthen the line of text in small point sizes, as well as define the overall feeling of the face. Malabar's x-height is very high, a deliberate choice that makes the most important parts of lowercase letters visibly larger in tiny settings. The height of the capital letters is also rather diminutive, allowing for better character fit, as well as eliminating a bit of clumsiness in German, which often includes quite a few uppercase letters. Diacritical marks and additional alphabetic forms required by many Western, Central, and Eastern European languages are naturally a part of the character set, including those needed in the Baltic states, for Romanian, and for Turkish. Malabar's accents are bold and direct, sitting well with their base glyphs. The family includes three weights, each with a companion Italic. Malabar Regular is equipped with small caps, and both it and Malabar Italic include oldstyle figures. All members of the family have both proportional and tabular-width lining figures, as well as special variants of certain punctuation marks vertically adjusted for all-caps text setting. Malabar is informed both by contemporary ideas of typeface design (sheared terminals, the wider-drawn s) as well as by 16th-century masters. Malabar Heavy and Heavy Italic are very loud; their blackness almost shouts out from the page. The Regular's wedge serifs become more slab-ish in nature as the letters' weight increases. Malabar Heavy and Heavy Italic are best relegated to headline use only. Malabar Bold and Bold Italic may be used for text emphasis, a job for which the Heavy is to dark. Malabar received a Certificate of Excellence in Type Design at the Type Directors Club of New York TDC2 competition in 2009.

Adelphi is a geometric sans, redefined for the northern side of the English Channel. Typographic modernism was a late arrival in Britain — due partly to the Second World War and to the strong local type tradition. This delay provided for fruitful divergence, thus modernism was not adored in quite the same way as it had been in Germany and central Europe. It was instead rethought and repurposed against the backdrop of the bleak British weather and postwar social reform – a continental fashion statement reshaped into a more humanist variant. Likewise, when crafting Adelphi, Nick Job reimagined the constraints that defined the geometric sans as a genre. Whereas other typefaces seem overly bound by the rules, Adelphi feels relaxed and approachable. Elementary square and circular shapes are merely implied. A keen observer may notice that the uncomplicated letterforms occasionally reveal a subtle naïveté associated with early Grotesques. Brunel’s bridges and Harry Beck’s tube map spring to mind alongside the Bauhaus and Futura. But Adelphi is by no means nostalgic! It is a contemporary, comprehensive, and durable system with a pragmatic set of features. These include a wide array of weights, ‘uniwidth italics’, and variable extenders that go from tall and flat in Adelphi Text to short and sharp in Adelphi Display, with default Adelphi standing midway between these two extremes. You can set the extenders to your preference in the all-inclusive variable font or use one of the three static fonts that come packed together, priced as a single font. The pan-European support for Latin, Cyrillic and Greek scripts already makes for a vast character set, but Adelphi takes things a step further by including alternate glyphs to satisfy the DIN1450 legibility norm, a range of ordinals that can be used to create specialist compositions in all three scripts and two kinds of fractions and arrows. Play with the alternates or use it as-is. Either way, this understated beauty will carry you through.

DT PaperType has evolved and morphed over time from quite distant origins. I previously created DT Paperside. It was neither Papyrus nor SSI Countryside, but was inspired in some ways by the Papyrus form, although untextured and smoother, and had the more open dimensions and proportions, similar to that of Countryside SSi, with its larger easily readable lowercase body, and more consistent, shorter stems. DT Paperside had an open scripted feel which was pleasing to the eye and easy to read. DT PaperType has since been crafted from of the original Paperside font. The Organic flow and comfortable form of Paperside has been retained, but it has been shifted very much from the feel of a script font, into a quality, extremely readable, organic and friendly, serif font, retaining its clarity, while adding a great deal of pose and class. This font is primarily suited to body text, and as such is extremely readable. It does however also make an excellent Display font, and comes with a full set of over sized Caps that drop below the line to stand out on a headline when required. Paperside can also automatically enhance the first letter of most sentences, and changes other letters to suit their position within words, and the letters they appear beside. Now comes with an italic that curves and softens various letters. For best results, use this ‘smart font’ with Contextual Ligatures turned on. Mulitiple Stylistic Alternatives are included. Inspiration for this fonts predecessor (Paperside) came from two other fonts. Papyrus: designed by Chris Costello and created in 1982, it is a hand-drawn textured typeface, emulating texts written in biblical times. One of the most used (and misused) fonts of all times. Owned by Letraset, and currently published by the Internation Typeface Corporating (ITC). Countryside SSi: The serif font of an unknown designer, currently licensed by Southern Software Inc. Feel free to preview some other Dragon Tongue fonts that are yet to be released, at https://www.dragon-tongue.com/fonts