K-Block was inspired by a hand-lettered sign by a young lady by the name of Kristina Lee. It captures a light-hearted, youthful feeling and is not intended to be taken too seriously. It was drawn for fun and is fun to use. Its very inconsistency insists on being casual and relaxed. Probably better for a birthday party announcement than a bank letterhead. Can you imagine a Just-For-Fun National Bank? K-Block Solid compliments K-Block and provides a stronger presence when required. For two-color work, K-Block can be layered on top of K-Block Solid to provide a different color outline for a very effective presentation. Full Western European character set plus alternate g and y, as well as a Th ligature. If you have a drawing program like Corel Draw, you can easily convert the alternate g and y to curves and stretch out the tails to underline an entire word. The zip package of each font includes two versions. There is an OTF version which is in Open PS (Post Script Type 1) format and a TTF version which is in Open TT (True Type)format. Use whichever works best for your applications. K-Block and K-Block Solid are sold separately.

Awardos is a complete solution for awards, badges and all kind of certificates. This font allows to mix various borders, laurels and icons to create a very unique badges. To quickly create an unique badge, type any number, any uppercase character and any lowercase character, for example 0Aa, 5Gk, 9Kl, 7Fr etc. To add starfield, start with a symbol (!"#$%&'()*+,). Glyphs included: 12x starfields - characters: ! " # $ % & ' ( ) * + , 16x borders - characters: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 : ; < = > ? 36x laurels and outer elements - characters: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z À Á Â Ã Ã Ä Å Ç È É Ê   12x crown icons - characters: a b c d e f g h i j k l 12x cup icons - characters: m n o p q r s t u v w x 12x number one digits - characters: y z à á â ã ã ä å ç è é ê It is not required to use a symbol from every category. For example only laurel with crown icon can be used, or only starfield with the cup icon. Awardos Inverse is an inversed version. The outline borders are still included, used symbols are: [ \ ] ^ _ { | } ~ ¢ £ ¤ ¥ ¦ § €

Lilard - Elegant Serif Font Lilard - Elegant Serif Font is a beautiful typeface that exudes sophistication and grace. The font was designed with the idea of creating a classic and elegant look, while still maintaining a modern and clean feel. The result is a font that is versatile and can be used for a variety of projects such as branding, logos, packaging, photography, and more. The design of Lilard font is inspired by the timeless and elegant look of serif fonts, but with a contemporary twist. The designer wanted to create a font that would stand out and be memorable, while also being easy to read and understand. The elegant curves and sharp serifs make Lilard a perfect choice for projects that require a touch of elegance and sophistication. Lilard font is best used for projects that require an elegant and refined look. This font is perfect for use in wedding invitations, business cards, and other high-end print materials. The font works well when paired with other sans-serif fonts, which helps to create a modern and clean feel. Lilard font comes with a variety of features that make it stand out from other fonts. The font includes uppercase and lowercase letters, as well as opentype features such as alternates and ligatures. Additionally, the font includes numbers, punctuation, and symbols, making it a versatile choice for a variety of projects. The font also supports multiple languages, making it a great choice for international projects. If you're looking for a font that is elegant, sophisticated, and versatile, Lilard - Elegant Serif Font is the perfect choice. Its unique design and features make it an ideal choice for a variety of projects. Use this font to add a touch of elegance and refinement to your designs and make them stand out. In summary, Lilard - Elegant Serif Font is a beautiful and elegant font that is perfect for high-end projects. Its unique design, features, and versatility make it a great choice for a variety of projects, including branding, logos, packaging, photography, and more. With its opentype features, multiple language support, and easy-to-use formats, Lilard is sure to become a go-to font for designers looking for an elegant and refined look.

With the clear, simple elegance of its sans serif forms and the warmly human touches of its tapering stems, the Optima family has proved popular around the world. In 2002, when it was finally possible to produce digital alphabets without technical limitations and compromises, and more than fifty years after the first sketches, an expansion and redesign of the Optima family was completed and released as Optima nova. Hermann Zapf and Japanese type designer, Akira Kobayashi, collaborated on the project, which included re-working of the existing weights and the addition of several new weights: small caps, old style figures, light, heavy, and condensed. The original Optima was never manufactured with a real italic, only an oblique version of the roman. Optima nova has a complete range of beautifully designed real italics; the new italic forms, of the e, f and g are especially notable. The titling face includes capital letters with special and unusual letter combinations and ligatures, making it an excellent choice for headlines, logos and advertising purposes. Optima continues to be an all-purpose typeface; and Optima nova works for just about anything from book text to signage. Optima Nova® font field guide including best practices, font pairings and alternatives.

Leo is an economic magazine and book face meant for use in sizes suitable for immersive reading, with different cuts optimized for different body copy size ranges, like footnotes and legal text. Designed with the explicit intent of relaying information without calling attention to itself, this typeface places itself squarely on the "function" side of the eternal debate about form versus content. The roman Leo fonts were built with as little ornamentation as possible, with wedge serifs, a high x-height and a skeleton somehwat rooted in the designers' reflections on the modern, post-war Dutch archetype. Rather than follow traditional models with entirely different forms, contracted widths and steep slants, the Leo italics deliver naturally subtle emphasis in reading by closely relating to the forms, stance and rhythm of their roman counterparts. The 12 Leo fonts contain over 700 glyphs each, and include support for the vast majority of Latin languages. Included OpenType features are built-in small caps, lining and oldstyle figures in both proportional and tabular sets, superiors, numerators, denominators inferiors, ordinals, automatic fractions, ligatures, and optional long descenders for optimal counterspace management in book and magazine text layout. For more information on Leo's character set, features and some print tests, please consult the PDF in the gallery section of this page.

Hiragino Sans Rounded (Maru Gothic) is derived from the basic design of the Hiragino Sans (Kaku Gothic) with its wide counters and comfortable appearance. It features gentle typeface that provides graceful roundedness to the tips of all the strokes of a character. On the flip side of this gentle impression is the fact that every single element in the Hiragino Sans upon which this typeface is based has been carefully polished down in every respect in pursuit of an elegant roundness that makes it possible to handle carefully executed typesetting. That approach is clearly different from the general rounded typeface that makes full use of the body, and makes it possible to respond the requirement of professional typesetting. It is never-uninteresting design whose letterform is rooted in the traditions of traditional printing type. It is a font that of course can be used on its own and easily formatted just like Hiragino Sans while adding splendid coloring to the page. Furthermore, when used with other Hiragino fonts such as Hiragino Sans or Hiragino Serif (Mincho), the fact that all their designs are oriented on the same vector creates a multiplier effect. The user may be surprised at the sense of unity that cannot be experienced when combining it with other typefaces.

Introducing Tiki Tangle - A Decorative and Classic Font Full of Retro Fun! Tiki Tangle is the answer for designers looking for a retro touch and uniqueness in their designs. This decorative font captures the retro fun that's all the rage right now, creating a balance between nostalgic memories of the past and timeless uniqueness. Each letter in Tiki Tangle is a work of art in itself, embracing a cute and unconventional retro aesthetic. Suitable for designers who want to add a touch of uniqueness to their projects, in line with contemporary design trends. With Tiki Tangle, you have the creative freedom to turn your designs into eye-catching works of art. Whether you're designing a classic poster, eye-catching product labels, or unique social media graphics. Here's what you get: Regular and Italic Version All Multilingual symbol Opentype features ( ligature, alternate ) Accessible in the Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, even work on Microsoft Word. PUA Encoded Characters - Fully accessible without additional design software. Multilingual character supports : (Afrikaans, Albanian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Zulu) Follow my shop for upcoming updates, and for more of my work, Thank you!

A nice, black display face - for a retro/western poster look. I have kept the quirky “t”, increased the dot above “i” and “j” slightly, improved the spacing/kerning and modified/added all the usual diacritics. A pretty easy reworking of a good quality font. Nick Curtis says: "An old favorite, Bernhard Antique Bold Condensed, cleaned up and fattened up. Warm, charming, personable … suitable for any occasion." 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.

Art Gothic was attributed to the Central Type Foundry of St. Louis, Missouri, USA by Henry Lewis Bullen, writing in INLAND PRINTER in 1907, with a reproduction shown in Kelly’s American Wood Type. The typeface appears on the cover of an issue of “The Superior Printer” pictured in Typology by Heller and Fili dated in the 1870s. Art Gothic was designed in 1884 by Gustav Schroeder and proved to be one of the more popular and enduring of the American-designed Victorian display faces of the period, appearing frequently in ads in various publications. The Hamilton Mfg. Co showed a very similar wood type, No. 232, with a modified and rather heavy-handed upper case in 1892. As late as 1897, it may be found in the advertising section of The Ivy of Trinity College of Hartford, Connecticut and was included in the Norwood Press 1902 Specimen Book. Our font includes a complement of five upper case and four lower case alternatives as follows: 123=C, 125=E, 135=H, 137=S, 172=c, 175=e, 215=m and 247=s. Great for period pieces. ART GOTHIC HIH is clean, readable, and surprisingly modern-looking; unlike so many overly complex Victorian display fonts, it can be used in text sizes.

Aquawax Pro PDF Specimen Aquawax Graphic Project on Behance Created as a custom brand typeface in 2008 by Francesco Canovaro, Aquawax is one of Zetafonts most successful typefaces - having been chosen, among the others, by Warner Bros for the design of the logo for the Aquaman movie. Its logo design roots are obvious in the design details, from the blade-like tail of the Q and the fin-like right leg of the K to the intentionally reversed uppercase W, as well as the rounded edges softening the stark modernist lettershapes. While this details make the typeface extremely suitable for logo and display design, especially in the bolder weights, the open, geometric forms of the letters and a generous x-height make it extremely readable at small sizes, making it perfect for body text and webfont use. In 2019 the family was completely redesigned by the Zetafonts team, expanding the original glyph set to include Cyrillic and Greek and adding three extra weights and italics to the original six weights, for a total of 27 weights (including 9 pictograms). The restored and revamped version, named Aquawax Pro, also includes full Open Type features for Positional Figures, Stylistic Alternates, Discretionary Ligatures and Small Caps, and adds to the typeface new alternate glyph shapes, accessible as Stylistic Alternates. Optimized for maximum screen readability, it covers over 200 languages that use the Latin, Cyrillic and Greek alphabet, with full range of accents and diacritics.

Quercus is characterised by open, yet a little bit condensed drawing with sufficient spacing so that the neighbouring letters never touch. It has eight interpolated weights with respective italics. Their fine gradation allows to find an exact valeur for any kind of design, especially on the web. Quercus serif styles took inspiration from classicistic typefaces with vertical shadows, ball terminals and thin serifs. The italics have the same width proportion as upright styles. This “modern” attitude is applied to both families and calls for use on the same page, e g in dictionaries and cultural programmes. Serif styles marked by “10” are dedicated to textual point sizes and long reading. The sans-serif principle is rather minimalistic, with subtle shadows and thinned joints between curved shapes and stems. Quercus family comprises of the usual functionality such as Small Caps, Cyrillics, diacritics, ligatures, scientific and aesthetic variants, swashes, and other bells & whistles. It excels in informational and magazine design, corporate identity and branding, but it’s very well suited for book covers, catalogues and posters as well. When choosing a name for this typeface I've been staring out from my studio window, thinking helplessly without any idea in sight. Suddenly I realised that all I can see is a spectacular alley of oaks (Quercus in Latin) surrounding my house. These oaks were planted by the builders of local ponds under the leadership of Jakub Krčín in the fifteenth century.

Quercus is characterised by open, yet a little bit condensed drawing with sufficient spacing so that the neighbouring letters never touch. It has eight interpolated weights with respective italics. Their fine gradation allows to find an exact valeur for any kind of design, especially on the web. Quercus serif styles took inspiration from classicistic typefaces with vertical shadows, ball terminals and thin serifs. The italics have the same width proportion as upright styles. This “modern” attitude is applied to both families and calls for use on the same page, e g in dictionaries and cultural programmes. Serif styles marked by “10” are dedicated to textual point sizes and long reading. The sans-serif principle is rather minimalistic, with subtle shadows and thinned joints between curved shapes and stems. Quercus family comprises of the usual functionality such as Small Caps, Cyrillics, diacritics, ligatures, scientific and aesthetic variants, swashes, and other bells & whistles. It excels in informational and magazine design, corporate identity and branding, but it’s very well suited for book covers, catalogues and posters as well. When choosing a name for this typeface I've been staring out from my studio window, thinking helplessly without any idea in sight. Suddenly I realised that all I can see is a spectacular alley of oaks (Quercus in Latin) surrounding my house. These oaks were planted by the builders of local ponds under the leadership of Jakub Krčín in the fifteenth century.

Quercus is characterised by open, yet a little bit condensed drawing with sufficient spacing so that the neighbouring letters never touch. It has eight interpolated weights with respective italics. Their fine gradation allows to find an exact valeur for any kind of design, especially on the web. Quercus serif styles took inspiration from classicistic typefaces with vertical shadows, ball terminals and thin serifs. The italics have the same width proportion as upright styles. This “modern” attitude is applied to both families and calls for use on the same page, e g in dictionaries and cultural programmes. Serif styles marked by “10” are dedicated to textual point sizes and long reading. The sans-serif principle is rather minimalistic, with subtle shadows and thinned joints between curved shapes and stems. Quercus family comprises of the usual functionality such as Small Caps, Cyrillics, diacritics, ligatures, scientific and aesthetic variants, swashes, and other bells & whistles. It excels in informational and magazine design, corporate identity and branding, but it’s very well suited for book covers, catalogues and posters as well. When choosing a name for this typeface I've been staring out from my studio window, thinking helplessly without any idea in sight. Suddenly I realised that all I can see is a spectacular alley of oaks (Quercus in Latin) surrounding my house. These oaks were planted by the builders of local ponds under the leadership of Jakub Krčín in the fifteenth century.

“Quercus” is characterised by open, yet a little bit condensed drawing with sufficient spacing so that the neighbouring letters never touch. It has eight interpolated weights with respective italics. Their fine gradation allows to find an exact valeur for any kind of design, especially on the web. Quercus serif styles took inspiration from classicistic typefaces with vertical shadows, ball terminals and thin serifs. The italics have the same width proportion as upright styles. This “modern” attitude is applied to both families and calls for use on the same page, e g in dictionaries and cultural programmes. Serif styles marked by “10” are dedicated to textual point sizes and long reading. The sans-serif principle is rather minimalistic, with subtle shadows and thinned joints between curved shapes and stems. Quercus family comprises of the usual functionality such as Small Caps, Cyrillics, diacritics, ligatures, scientific and aesthetic variants, swashes, and other bells & whistles. It excels in informational and magazine design, corporate identity and branding, but it’s very well suited for book covers, catalogues and posters as well. When choosing a name for this typeface I've been staring out from my studio window, thinking helplessly without any idea in sight. Suddenly I realised that all I can see is a spectacular alley of oaks (Quercus in Latin) surrounding my house. These oaks were planted by the builders of local ponds under the leadership of Jakub Krčín in the fifteenth century.

"Step into a world where the 1920s meet the future with Soprani—a typeface that seamlessly blends vintage charm and modern sophistication. Drawing inspiration from a distinctive plaque unearthed in New Zealand, Soprani showcases serifs that flare and shimmer, capturing the essence of art nouveau and arts & crafts in a contemporary light. Dive into its rich OpenType features, granting designers unparalleled flexibility to bring their visions to life. Its condensed yet elegant letterforms are the perfect fit for everything from artful table books and stylish menus to dynamic media showcases in TV and film. Spanning from the graceful subtlety of its thin variant to the undeniable boldness of the black, Soprani is diverse and dynamic. Soprani isn't just a typeface—it's a revolution in design. Production assistance by Lucas Azevedo and ikern.

Envoy is a serif type inspired primarily by Garalde oldstyle types like those of Claude Garamond. As such, it is particularly well suited for book and magazine text. Characteristic details more typical of Venetian oldstyle faces serve to give Envoy just a bit more personality. The base family includes regular, italic, bold, bold italic and small capitals. Expert sets add ligatures and alternate letterforms. Display sets include letterforms customized for titling. Originally designed in 1995 and 1996, for the 1996 Morisawa International Typeface Design Competition, Envoy was later revived, completed and publicly released in 1998. During the initial design, the family was known as Truman in honor of Northeast Missouri State University becoming Truman State University, but the name was changed to Envoy prior to entry in the competition.

Franciszek Otto of Poland designed Linotype Notec in 1999. Linotype Notec is a low-tech" (or even "no tech!") typeface. By embracing handwriting's spontaneity, it has gotten as far away from technology as it can. Classified as an "inky"-style script face, for lack of a better term, Linotype Notec's informal design seems immediately artful and full of expression. Its irregularity and unexpectedness enlivens any composition, similar to how jazz or modern dance animate a room. Quite full of "ink," Linotype Notec's "strokes" are written in a sort of short-note-handwriting-style, which a slow-writing, thoughtful humanist might theoretically scribble to himself late at night. Yet Linotype Notec's character still maintains a jolt of energy; try Linotype Notec in small applications, in any size from 12-point on up."

Das Riese, a type specimen by the most productive Brazilian type foundry, Intellecta Design, is a mix of victorian and art deco influences. A beautiful display type for tiling with uppercases only. It's shadows and volumes refer to pre-modern age whereas its surface to last century 20's. This heavy sans serif strokes characters have a particular appearance, a parallel line texture that reminds Bifur, typeface created in 1929 by A. M. Cassandre. The sideways absence of volume at some leaning letters right side in addition to the patchy darkness of shadows support its handmade design. A type full of historical references designed to small titles printed in big sizes. It's impossible not to think about posters when you look at Das Riese strong face. - (source Slanted Magazine #8)

Years ago, by happenstance, designers Nancy Mazzei and Brian Kelly found an old decrepit typewriter in an abandoned lot with tall grass in Brooklyn. They kept it around their apartment for two years. Then one day they decided that it was time to move and they planned to throw the old typewriter away. But it was so beautiful they wanted to keep at least a part of it. So they decided on keeping the keys. They kept the keys in a brown bag until one fine day the keys were introduced to a camera. It was a match made in heaven that resulted in some beautiful quirky images of typewriter keys. These images were the inspiration for Backspacer. They were scanned, traced and turned into a working typeface by Zuzana Licko.

TradaSans is a new addition in the range of Univers and Helvetica. It represents a fresh face in this ongoing strong category of sans serif typefaces. TradaSans slightly squarish tendency, and its technical and neutral look create an objective and factual appearance. TradaSans is an ideal typeface for universal use. It offers high reading qualities with longer text applications and its sophisticated design details make it a distinctive headline typeface. TradaSans consists of 20 well tuned weights and is well equipped for advanced typography. It comes in OpenType format with extended support for up to 80 languages. All weights contain small caps, ligatures, superior characters, proportional lining figures, tabular lining figures, proportional old style figures, lining old style figures, matching currency symbols, fraction- and scientific numerals, matching arrows and alternate characters.

This extremely heavy informal script was created in the early 1920s by Lucian Bernhard. Like so many of his designs, this typeface has its roots in his earlier poster work. Bernhard Brushscript invokes a rather warm, pleasant feeling despite a number of quirky characters. Originally created for the Bauer Foundry of Frankfurt, Germany, the face looks as though it’s been drawn with a brush and contains looping ascenders and descenders. Perfect for situations where a quaint and casual lettering effect is desired. The Bernhard Brushscript is also available in the OpenType Std format. Some new characters have been added to this OpenType version. Advanced features currently work in Adobe Creative Suite InDesign, Creative Suite Illustrator, and Quark XPress 7. Check for OpenType advanced feature support in other applications as it gradually becomes available with upgrades.

Natalya Swashes provides a diverse set of flowing swashes and ornaments originally designed to complement the popular insigne script Natalya. The basis point for Natalya's ornate swirls is the golden ratio, and this makes for especially harmonious swashes with timeless appeal. These poised and graceful flourishes can be easily adapted to many design situations, even in situations that don't call for Natalya Swashes' script companion. Natalya swashes can be resized and rotated easily without any loss of quality and converted to outlines and modified. Combine them to form unique compositions or insert them into your copy to create interest. Please see the sample .pdf to see all 56 ornaments in action. The Natalya Swash package comes with an inDesign sample file to quickly reference ornaments and copy and paste them into your layouts.

A typographic revolution-Bronzetti has been a long term project for Greater Albion Typefounders, aimed at filling a large gap in the range of typefaces available today. The Bronzetti family of 22 text typefaces combines modern requirements for legibility and readability with the charm of traditional Roman faces in the spirit of those carefully constructed by small scale quality foundries such as the Kelmscott and Vale presses. In short, Bronzetti is traditional letterpress meets modern publishing, offering a real opportunity to make your material stand out from today’s ‘run of the mill’ crowd. The range of typefaces on offer includes five widths of type, as well as small capitals and italic forms and regular and bold weights. Try out Bronzetti today, make your work stand out from the crowd and join the revolution!

Serofina is an adaptable and fluid connected script with plenty of alternate flourish options. From clean and flowing to cute and frilly, Serofina can do it. The Serofina family comes with four weights, including a unique hairline, which makes it a versatile investment for a wide range of design possibilities. All weights include the OpenType programming to automatically and seamlessly swap out the default characters for 45 alternate forms and 18 auto-replacing ligatures. These alternates can make the face appear to be more simplified, restrained or frilly. Serofina also includes seven ornaments and old-style numbers. Check out the sample images to see these features in action. Serofina is a highly versatile script family and its range of weights make it perfect for whenever you need an expressive and original typeface.

Engraving inspired typeface The AW Conqueror Carved encapsulates perfectly the lettering styles in fashion during the 19th century quite often in the frontispieces of books. It wasn’t rare to see these kinds of typefaces, with their variations in depth and relief effects, adorning boxes and other forms of packaging of the time. AW Conqueror superfamily AW Conqueror Didot is part of a larger family, who include 4 others subfamilies with great potential: They’re but based on same structure, with some connection between them (width for example), to offer a great & easy titling toolbox to any designers, from skilful to beginner. Each of the members try their best to be different from the others because of their features. They should work harmoniously in contrast. Club des directeurs artistiques Prix 2010 European Design Awards 2011

BB Noname™ (Pro) is intended to imply the appearance of a conventional typeface in a contemporary context. Due to the frequent use in the public service (among other things), the style associates a supposedly objective face. The style is characterized by the proportions, the contradiction of the apparently perfect reduction and the retention of chirographic elements. In addition, the rapid further development of the input devices has meant that existing character sets have been added again and again, regardless of style and technical requirements. With this work, the properties were analyzed, the characteristic features highlighted and summarized in a complete typesetting: Anonymity (procedure), bureaucracy (style by category), convention (shape) and formality (optical corrections). ● 3 Variants: Human, Computer, Interaction ● 20 Stylistic-Sets ● 34 Styles ● 39 OpenType features ● 93 Languages Support ● 35,598 (1,047/Style)

Australian designer and art director Wayne Thompson has loved typography “ever since I received a battered second-hand Letraset catalog at the age of 10.” He based ITC Django on the handwriting of an acquaintance -- “a fellow I know who writes and illustrates children's books and is also a commercial artist” -- who called himself Django, after the jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. “I felt that that name Django suited the funky, lively feel of the face,” says Thompson. But he adds, “Django has a split personality: it appears loose and easy at first, but after looking at it for some time I felt an edginess come through that was slightly psychotic.” The looseness of the lowercase contrasts with the spikiness of the capitals. The “edginess” is especially apparent in words in all caps.

Gia is 7 weights, true small caps and unicase options, designed after iconic letterforms of the 1960’s to 1980’s. In the early years of the American tech revolution, when Silicon Valley was more closely identified with Dallas, Texas, a curious type of letterform began to appear—strict in geometry, and curiously minimal in geometry and stroke, making it easier to be read by machine-readers, and people more used to reading machine-generated typography. Coders! As the years went on, this kind of sinewy, curved letterform began popping up in logotypes and music videos and upright video games: NASA, The Buggles, Atari, Pong, Sega, Namco, Stern, Devo, Apple. Gia pays homage to that letterform, and is named after Gia Carangi, the iconic face of early 1980’s pop fashion.

The rather wide, caps-only Monotype Engravers family imitates scripts that evolved from copperplate and steel plate engravers hands of the nineteenth century, which were a quite expressive medium! Monotype Engravers' letters show a strong contrast between thick and thin strokes and have sharply cut serifs. In 1899, Robert Wiebking (who worked for a number of foundries in his time) designed an all-caps typeface named Engravers Roman."" Shortly thereafter, American Type Founders, Inc. (ATF) released another successful ancestor of this design in 1902, ""Engravers Bold,"" designed by Morris Fuller Benton. Engravers Bold was also released by the Barnhart Brothes & Spinder foundry. Also made available by Lanston Monotype at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Engravers faces soon became a popular choice for letter heads, advertising and stationery.

Joost Schmidt?s (1893?1948) name is undoubtedly connected with monolinear condensed letters of geometric appearance ? his unfinished draft of a stencil alphabet, constructed on grid paper in 1930, is much lesser known. These modular shapes simply consist of half circles, quarter circles and square strokes with half-round terminals. From just six original letterforms (a, b, c, d, e, g), Flavia Zimbardi completed Schmidt?s draft and extended it to a full character set for contemporary use, adding upper case letters and different figure sets including old-style. Joschmi overcomes legibility issues usually associated with this stencil style, with special attention to the design of white space. Zimbardi lends the face even more character by carefully adding round terminals in subtle spots of the alphabet, accessible through stylistic sets.

NarrowWay is a family of 18 condensed and ultra-condensed sans-serif typefaces. The family started with the ultra-condensed widths, then the condensed and regular widths (the regular is still quite condensed) were added. All widths have three weights and each weight has an italics style. These 18 styles lack a true lowercase but rather have a set of alternative characters, some based on lower-case forms, on the lower-case keys. Some alternative letters can be reached with the OpenType feature of stylistic sets. The character spacing in most of the styles is quite loose and it can be tightened with an application's character spacing if needed. These typefaces are display faces that can be useful for squeezing tall lettering into tight spaces. They are not readable at small point sizes.

In today's typographic landscape, few would still consider Bodoni to have a "modern" feel, but there was once a time when it's vertical axis and thinned horizontal strokes were considered radical. Volterra—inspired by the forms of Bodoni—finishes what Bodoni started and eliminates the horizontal stroke altogether, breathing an elegant new energy into a 200-year-old classic. Named for the artist hired to paint loincloths over Michelangelo's "Last Judgement" when nudity in religious art was condemned, Volterra acknowledges that it is no easy feat picking up where a master left off. Volterra takes what has grown to feel traditional and transforms it into a delicate mixture of classic and modern, with razor-edged serifs and ultra-sharp strokes. Strictly a display face, the larger Volterra is used, the better it looks.

The rather wide, caps-only Monotype Engravers family imitates scripts that evolved from copperplate and steel plate engravers hands of the nineteenth century, which were a quite expressive medium! Monotype Engravers' letters show a strong contrast between thick and thin strokes and have sharply cut serifs. In 1899, Robert Wiebking (who worked for a number of foundries in his time) designed an all-caps typeface named Engravers Roman."" Shortly thereafter, American Type Founders, Inc. (ATF) released another successful ancestor of this design in 1902, ""Engravers Bold,"" designed by Morris Fuller Benton. Engravers Bold was also released by the Barnhart Brothes & Spinder foundry. Also made available by Lanston Monotype at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Engravers faces soon became a popular choice for letter heads, advertising and stationery.

Preface vs. Helvetica/Futura/Gill: a different strategy of text color. Whereas the established classes of sans serif typeface achieve a dynamic balance between stroke and space by combining a diversity of letterform with an evenness of fit, Preface switches the emphasis, driving out diagonals to create a dominant harmony of curves and perpendiculars, matched with a greater variety of inter-character space shapes—the result of extra width introduced in the “f” and “t”, and by the openness that accompanies the wide tails of the “ a” and “l”, the long ear of the “r”, and the serif of the “i”. En masse, and in keeping with the present trend in typography, Preface exhibits a coarser texture than the traditional sans serif faces, but one that is nonetheless even and precise. With tabular, oldstyle figures.

Estragon is a vivid sans-serif text face with venetian influences, suitable especially for books. It is remarkable for: its light slant, to the right, for most of the verticals, its small sized uppercase letters making it suitable for languages where they are often used (for example German,) and its just lightly inclined true italics. For a wide language support, Estragon contains a lot of accented characters including the polish kreska. It is generously equipped with ligatures, special and alternate characters as well as various kinds of numbers: besides the standard old-style figures to be set as part of text copy there are small-cap and tabular numbers as well as a set of fraction figures. Estragon comes with two weights, uprights and true italics, each with small-caps.

Meringue, a transitional serif face, is designed specially for modern glossy magazines. It is ideal for fashion photography, fashion publications and mag covers, and can be used for headings and captions, as well as for body copy. The italic version, with its wave-like vertical strokes, creates yet more stylishly expressive feel. Text set in Meringue has an elegant weightless look, and the strongest effect can be achieved with high-quality printing. The typeface includes old style figures, ligatures, and alternative characters that allow creating truly versatile design by means of typography. Designers may also find Meringue perfect for beautiful presentations, invitations and other special occasion papers. Meringue was designed during the Type and Typography course at the British Higher School of Art and Design, supervised by Ilya Ruderman.

Almost every type designer feels the need, from time to time, to interrupt his or her serious work on complex text type systems for something more playful. In Luc(as)'s case this has often meant designing more typefaces. In the early 1990s, while working on Thesis, Luc(as) drew several display faces which were based on the shapes of TheSans but were either de(con)structive versions or experimental variations. Probably the most innovative of these was Nebulae, in which the lettershapes have been dissolved into clouds of bubbles; the three versions can be layered to obtain a denser (and more legible) structure which can also be multi-coloured. A fourth version called ThreeDee (3D) offers a convincing simulation of three-dimensional bubble-like type floating in space.