Originally designed in 1996, Mrs Eaves was Zuzana Licko’s first attempt at the design of a traditional typeface. It was styled after Baskerville, the famous transitional serif typeface designed in 1757 by John Baskerville in Birmingham, England. Mrs Eaves was named after Baskerville’s live in housekeeper, Sarah Eaves, whom he later married. One of Baskerville’s intents was to develop typefaces that pushed the contrast between thick and thin strokes, partially to show off the new printing and paper making techniques of his time. As a result his types were often criticized for being too perfect, stark, and difficult to read. Licko noticed that subsequent interpretations and revivals of Baskerville had continued along the same path of perfection, using as a model the qualities of the lead type itself, not the printed specimens. Upon studying books printed by Baskerville at the Bancroft Library in Berkeley, Licko decided to base her design on the printed samples which were heavier and had more character due to the imprint of lead type into paper and the resulting ink spread. She reduced the contrast while retaining the overall openness and lightness of Baskerville by giving the lower case characters a wider proportion. She then reduced the x-height relative to the cap height to avoid increasing the set width. There is something unique about Mrs Eaves and it’s difficult to define. Its individual characters are at times awkward looking—the W being narrow, the L uncommonly wide, the flare of the strokes leading into the serifs unusually pronounced. Taken individually, at first sight some of the characters don’t seem to fit together. The spacing is generally too loose for large bodies of text, it sort of rambles along. Yet when used in the right circumstance it imparts a very particular feel that sets it clearly apart from many likeminded types. It has an undefined quality that resonates with people. This paradox (imperfect yet pleasing) is perhaps best illustrated by design critic and historian Robin Kinross who has pointed out the limitation of the “loose” spacing that Licko employed, among other things, yet simultaneously designated the Mrs Eaves type specimen with an honorable mention in the 1999 American Center for Design competition. Proof, perhaps, that type is best judged in the context of its usage. Even with all its shortcomings, Mrs Eaves has outsold all Emigre fonts by twofold. On MyFonts, one of the largest on-line type sellers, Mrs Eaves has been among the 20 best selling types for years, listed among such classics as Helvetica, Univers, Bodoni and Franklin Gothic. Due to its commercial and popular success it has come to define the Emigre type foundry. While Licko initially set out to design a traditional text face, we never specified how Mrs Eaves could be best used. Typefaces will find their own way. But if there’s one particular common usage that stands out, it must be literary—Mrs Eaves loves to adorn book covers and relishes short blurbs on the flaps and backs of dust covers. Trips to bookstores are always a treat for us as we find our Mrs Eaves staring out at us from dozens of book covers in the most elegant compositions, each time surprising us with her many talents. And Mrs Eaves feels just as comfortable in a wide variety of other locales such as CD covers (Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief being our favorite), restaurant menus, logos, and poetry books, where it gives elegant presence to short texts. One area where Mrs Eaves seems less comfortable is in the setting of long texts, particularly in environments such as the interiors of books, magazines, and newspapers. It seems to handle long texts well only if there is ample space. A good example is the book /CD/DVD release The Band: A Musical History published by Capitol Records. Here, Mrs Eaves was given appropriate set width and generous line spacing. In such cases its wide proportions provide a luxurious feel which invites reading. Economy of space was not one of the goals behind the original Mrs Eaves design. With the introduction of Mrs Eaves XL, Licko addresses this issue. Since Mrs Eaves is one of our most popular typefaces, it’s not surprising that over the years we've received many suggestions for additions to the family. The predominant top three wishes are: greater space economy; the addition of a bold italic style; and the desire to pair it with a sans design. The XL series answers these requests with a comprehensive set of new fonts including a narrow, and a companion series of Mrs Eaves Sans styles to be released soon. The main distinguishing features of Mrs Eaves XL are its larger x-height with shorter ascenders and descenders and overall tighter spacing. These additional fonts expand the Mrs Eaves family for a larger variety of uses, specifically those requiring space economy. The larger x-height also allows a smaller point size to be used while maintaining readability. Mrs Eaves XL also has a narrow counterpart to the regular, with a set width of about 92 percent which fulfills even more compact uses. At first, this may not seem particularly narrow, but the goal was to provide an alternative to the regular that would work well as a compact text face while maintaining the full characteristics of the regular, rather than an extreme narrow which would be more suitable for headline use. Four years in the making, we're excited to finally let Mrs Eaves XL find its way into the world and see where and how it will pop up next.

Maghfirah is a delicate and elegant handwritten font. Its distinct and well rounded letters make this font a masterpiece. Fall in love with its incredibly versatile style and use it to create spectacular designs.

Migolan is a sweet and soft handwritten script font. Fall in love with an authentic feel and use it to create beautiful wedding invitations, beautiful artwork, interesting social media posts, and funny greeting cards.

Stiffeny Maritta is a flowing handwritten font, described by an elegant touch, perfect for your favorite projects. Fall in love with its incredibly distinct and timeless style and use it to create spectacular designs!

Burswood is a delicate and elegant handwritten font. Its distinct and well rounded letters make this font a masterpiece. Fall in love with its incredibly versatile style and use it to create spectacular designs!

Black Eagle is a flowing handwritten font, described by an elegant touch, perfect for your favorite projects. Fall in love with its incredibly distinct and timeless style and use it to create spectacular designs.

Amellya is a delicate and elegant handwritten font. Its distinct and well rounded letters make this font a masterpiece. Fall in love with its incredibly versatile style and use it to create spectacular designs!

A beautiful display font is called Got Love. Add it to your original ideas to see how it helps them stand out since it can be readily suited to a huge range of projects.

Flatpen is a font that was written with a pen we used to call "Redis-Pen". It had a flat, round tip that enabled you to write letters, with the same width of stroke.

Hello I Like You was designed by Cindy Kinash. This is a hand-drawn font, light and tall. Hello I Like You is fun, casual and works great for any of your design needs.

Rearviewmirror (no space) is a Pearl Jam song and it happens to be my favourite! Rearview Mirror is a handmade tall & thin font. It comes in a regular and bold style with their italics.

Agenda King feels equally charming and elegant. Fall in love with its incredibly versatile style and use it to create gorgeous wedding invitations, beautiful stationary art, eye-catching social media posts, and much more!

Discovered in The Zanerian Manual of Alphabets and Engrossing was this quaint charmer, called simply "Italic Roundhand". The manual touts this face as plain, practical and rapid; it's lovely, luscious and nostalgic, as well.

Bolognaise is a relaxed and flowing handwritten font, created with the help of a beautiful brush pen. Fall in love with its incredibly distinct and timeless style and use it to create spectacular designs!

Baby Sakura is a flowing handwritten font, described by an elegant touch, perfect for your favorite projects. Fall in love with its incredibly distinct and timeless style and use it to create spectacular designs!

Satista is a modern and stylish serif font. Its distinct and well-balanced letters make this font a masterpiece. Fall in love with its incredibly versatile style and use it to create spectacular designs!

The hand lettered title for the 1890s book called “The Octopus” featured extra bold Art Nouveau lettering with rounded serifs. This is now available as Headline Nouveau JNL in both regular and oblique versions.

Canfiled is a delicate and elegant handwritten font. Its distinct and well balanced letters make this font a masterpiece. Fall in love with its incredibly versatile style and use it to create spectacular designs!

Red Bubble is a spectacular, graffiti styled display font. It will elevate a wide range of design projects to the highest level, be it branding, headings, wall art illustration, apparel, labels, and much more!

Ardilas is a modern and flowing handwritten font. It features varied bases, smooth lines, gorgeous glyphs, and stunning alternatives. Fall in love with its incredibly versatile style, and use it to create spectacular designs!

Display Crisp is a display font not intended for text use. It was designed specifically for display, headline, logotype, branding, and similar applications. Display Crisp has tall and short cap alphabets, numbers, and punctuation.

Slab Compact JNL was based on the printed title found on the box cover of a 1950s-era word games set called “Lex-O-Grams” and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Caramel Candy is a flowing handwritten font, described by an elegant touch, perfect for your favorite projects. Fall in love with its incredibly distinct and timeless style and use it to create spectacular designs!

Ballestro is a playful, versatile display font. Its name is a nod to the characters being constructed using a grid-like pattern of balls. Ballestro is great for headlines, signage, logos, packaging and more.

Gietta is a sweet, soft hand-lettered font. Fall in love with its authentic feel and use it to create gorgeous wedding invitations, beautiful stationary art, eye-catching social media posts, and sweet logos.

Sardis is based on a family of wood type called "Lydian," designed for American Type Founders Company by Warren Chappell in 1938. The strokes have angled ends, referencing the use of a calligraphy nib.

Ratched is a delicate and elegant handwritten font. Its distinct and well balanced letters make this font a masterpiece. Fall in love with its incredibly versatile style and use it to create spectacular designs!

Our penchant for banner types lives on. This one is our take on an 1880s font called Mezzotint. Banner fonts give the appearance of art work, without having to do any. We like that.

Pagi Senja is a flowing handwritten font, described by an elegant touch, perfect for your favorite projects. Fall in love with its incredibly distinct and timeless style and use it to create spectacular designs!

Enamela (rhymes with Pamela) is a monoline square sans that is available in normal width and condensed versions. Although rooted in the early years of sans serif type, the Enamela fonts have a timeless quality that is practical and unpretentious. The letterforms derive from vitreous enamel signage dating from the Victorian era and widely used in Britain for street nameplates, Post Office signs, the plates on James Ludlow wall postboxes, railway signs and direction signs, as well as for circular Automobile Association wayfinding plaques throughout the first half of the twentieth century. The quirky terminals, stemming from the compression of geometric type, invite comparison with the Charles Wright fonts used for UK vehicle registration plates. Enamela and Enamela Condensed are both available in three weights – regular, medium and bold – and as italics (optically corrected obliques). A commonly used alternative M with a vertex that touches the baseline is provided at the Alt-M (µ) keystroke on a Mac, or Alt-0181 on Windows. A commonly used G with a plain vertical throat, no crosspiece, is assigned Unicode FF27 (full width capital G).

The Dalecarlian runes, or dalrunes, was a late version of the runic script that was in use in the Swedish province of Dalarna until the 20th century.The province has consequently been called the "last stronghold of the Germanic script. When Carl Linnaeus visited Älvdalen in Dalarna in 1734, he made the following note in his diary: The peasants in the community here, apart from using rune staves, still today write their names and ownership marks with runic letters, as is seen on walls, corner stones, bowls, etc. Which one does not know to be still continued anywhere else in Sweden. The Dalecarlian runes were derived from the medieval runes, but the runic letters were combined with Latin ones, and Latin letters would progressively replace the runes. At the end of the 16th century, the Dalecarlian runic inventory was almost exclusively runic, but during the following centuries more and more individual runes were replaced with Latin characters. In its last stage almost every rune had been replaced with a Latin letter, or with special versions that were influenced by Latin characters.

A tessellation is a shape that can be used to completely fill the plane without gaps or overlaps—simple examples are isosceles triangles, squares, and hexagons. Tessellation patterns are eye-catching and visually appealing, which is the reason that they have long been popular in a variety of decorative situations. TessieSomeMore has two family members, a solid style that must have different colors to be useful and an outline style. They can be used separately or they can be used in layers with the outline style on top of the solid style. For rows to align properly, leading must be the same as point size. To see how patterns can be constructed, see the “Samples” file here. Shapes that tessellate and also resemble real-world objects are often called Escher-like tessellations. Most of the shapes in TessieSomeMore are Escher-like. Over half are either bug-like and bird-like shapes. There are also a few animal and other object shapes as well as some geometric or abstract shapes that have visual appeal.

Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813) was called the King of Printers and the Bodoni font owes its creation in 1767 to his masterful cutting techniques. Predecessors in a similar style were the typefaces of Pierre Simon Fournier (1712–1768) and the Didot family (1689–1836). The Bodoni font distinguishes itself through the strength of its characters and embodies the rational thinking of the Enlightenment. The new typefaces displaced the Old Face and Transitional styles and was the most popular typeface until the mid-19th century. Bodoni’s influence on typography was dominant until the end of the 19th century and even today inspires new creations. Working with this font requires care, as the strong emphasis of the vertical strokes and the marked contrast between the fine and thick lines lessens Bodoni’s legibility, and the font is therefore better in larger print with generous spacing. Chauncey H. Griffith’s Poster Bodoni displays characteristics of the advertisement fonts of the first half of the 20th century. The font was most often used for posters and signs, eventually including neon signs.

Rawhide is a fresh digitization and expansion of a very popular (yet uncredited) early 1970s film type called Yippie, which was commonly used in wild west cartoons and comics. Publishers of Lucky Luke, the famous Belgian comic by Morris, used these bouncy letters for the titling on a few of their soft cover editions, and different variations of it were used throughout the 1970s and 1980s by cartoon classic Looney Tunes and a variety of wild west animations and comics. It slowly disappeared without fanfare when desktop publishing became the norm. Here it is again now for the computer age, available as a high quality font with a complete character set that accommodates more than 20 Latin-based languages. In short, Rawhide comes with an impressive track record, and is a must for any funny cowboy design or off the wall wild west layout. This set of fonts contains a very expanded character set that includes full support for Central, Eastern and Western European languages, as well as Baltic, Turkish, Esperanto, Greek, Cyrillic and Vietnamese.