Pilar and Ferran based Arlette on the fast stroke of one letter from a Roger Excoffon family, but along the way they abandoned that starting point in favour of experimentation. Many sans serifs are like a svelte black dress: functional, beautiful, and the unfussy outfit for a nice evening get together. The Arlette family isn’t like this. It’s a stunner — an incandescent reimagining of what defines a sans and how it can look. Arlette explores the boundaries of the sans serif landscape and returns with forms developed from gestural vigour. Thinking of it as “painterly” may at first seem to fit, but it underestimates Arlette’s ability to master an unseen world of countless emotions and physical applications: magazines, branding, editorial, teen and young adult works, book covers, and a host of products and packaging whose content will be amplified with Arlette’s voice. Not only does Arlette use its eight weights plus italics to speak in Latin-based scripts, it is also fluent in Thai and has six weights (hairline through bold) with which it meets that challenge, whether in text or display. Arlette Thai’s modern nature is seen in two features for the script. One is the decorative Thai characters that are based on original palm leaf manuscripts. Another is a version of the Latin numerals adapted to the height of the script due to their wide use in Thailand. Arlette Thai has been meticulously developed, including contextual kerning to avoid mark clashes. Arlette’s OpenType capabilities include mathematic and scientific figures, positional forms, pointers, arrows, and oldstyle, lining, and tabular lining numerals. In addition to all this, it’s packed with swashes and swash ligatures in both scripts for enthusiastic typesetting. Because it pushes experimentation without compromising readability, both Arlette Thai and Latin are surprisingly legible in small sizes and arrestingly beautiful when their details can be seen.

DESCRIPTION With Skill I wanted to create something wild. Something that splashed the letters with life. To do this, I knew I'd have to break the barrier between analog and digital, so I took my best brush and started to play. Throughout the years as a type-designer I've met and become fan of many calligraphers. My belief that only a good calligrapher can make good typography (1) has become even stronger. I'm now absolutely sure that only practice improves the skill, especially in this field. So, with this in mind, I started a font which was a challenge for me because sometimes the gap between paper and screen can be gigantic. Skill is another of my attemps (2) to capture the spirit of the pointed brush, its expressiveness, the passions and fears of the artist. This font is about freedom. Freedom everywhere. Movement, velocity, passion. To achieve this, many alternates and ligatures per glyph were designed. Use it on magazines, posters, book covers, music albums, t-shirts, skates, tattoos. NOTES (1) This is mostly referred to script fonts, though text fonts made by designers with a deep calligraphic background have at least to me, an extra charm. (2) See my fonts Live and Indie. TIPS Thanks to Open-Type, the font gives the user the chance to play and get many wonderful results: In example, using the font with “discretionary ligatures” activated will give more life to the written word. Some letters will jump of the base, while others will ligate or not with the following (typical of gestural calligraphy). Adobe Illustrator is recommended. STYLES Skill is the most complete style. It has all the alternates and ligatures that can be seen in the posters and more! Skill Standard is a variant with no decorative glyphs. It has the basic alphabet and some ligatures for better legibility.

The coffee made typography. CoffeeBreak is a typefamily designed by Carlos Fabian Camargo G. Its purpose is to communicate similar feelings to the ones you get when you first try the best roasted Colombian coffee early in the morning. That is the reason of the waiting, accompanied, or when you only want to be, nuances your design with its fonts full of flavor, texture and passion. For each time, every time, it gives you hints of flavor to design your day. It unleashes your artistic streak mixing possibilities as you wish, to your taste or the taste of your friends or that special someone. From handwriting to every warm drop of your first mug of the morning, we've always got something for you. Eye catching, modern, beautiful, cool and adventurous styles in the CoffeeBrwak shop ready for you to purchase. - CoffeeBreak A & B: 2 typographic tools with countless swashes and ligatures ideal for use at the beginning, in the middle or end of words that need italics, flavored dancers and rhythm masterfully expressed in gestural strokes for his calligraphic experimental logic. - Coffee Break Script 1 & 2: write them you can easily with decorative letters advocating a return to the artisan product ingenuity of the primacy of man over machine so your upper and lower case letters travel in a single line. - CoffeeBreak Words & WordsBold: It contains words specially designed to attract attention. - CoffeeBreak Dingbats: They are figurative silhouettes with textures that add warmth and a highly communicative environment. All are easily activated glyphs using the Glyphs panel in Illustrator, InDesign and Photoshop. Special thanks: Ilustrations: Eduardo Gomes. Photos: Karen Salvatierra. Texts: Javier Lineares- Description: Ernesto Googolplex. French translation: Marta Cano

Kayto Script is the second collaboration of Erwin Indrawan as the calligrapher and Dexsar Harry Anugrah of Majestype as the typeface designer. Today the resurgence of calligraphy has reached the summit, with social media as the vehicle, we are now familiar with many styles of calligraphy. One of the popular styles is brush lettering, especially the pointed brush calligraphy. Kayto Script is an exploration in pointed brush calligraphy. It’s an interpretation of modern brush calligraphy that combines cursive writing with the East Asian calligraphy flair. Kayto is made with a real brush and held perpendicular to the paper so the brush can twist and turn freely to follow the movement of the hand. This technique gives a natural gesture and energetic look to the strokes. Kayto has a unique rhythm of brush pressure to generate the thick-and-thin strokes... the beating heart of brush calligraphy. Instead of the mechanical thick-and-thin strokes like the regular calligraphy, Kayto is written with a lot of variety of pressure that is somewhat melodic but still conform with the discipline. The result is a script that feels personal and characterized with lively energy. And just like handwriting, every letter in Kayto script is crafted with many varieties of glyphs and ligatures to make an unlimited combination of personalized lettering. Because of its natural letterforms, Kayto Script is best suited to complement anything that is earthy or has nature as the ground. Erwin, the calligrapher, has used Kayto in many of his watercolor illustrations. Another ideas are wedding names on invitations or place cards, logo for any natural products, inspirational quotes, business cards and the list goes on... but in the end, if you wish for something personal and truly one of a kind then Kayto script the one you want. Also, Kayto offer a free version called "Kayto Doodles" designed by Adiet Pramudya.

Lyra is an Italian Renaissance script that might have developed if metal type had not broken the evolution of broad pen calligraphy. It lies in the area between the humanist bookhand and the chancery cursive, combining the fullness and articulation of the Roman letters with a moderate italic slant and condensation. A steep pen-angle allows use of a broader pen relative to the x-height, giving the letters more contrast with light verticals and heavy curves. Lyra embodies the Renaissance spirit of refining technical advances of the late middle ages with reintroduction of ancient classical principles. Based on the moving penstroke with constantly changing pen-angle, it brings the vitality of handwriting to the ordered legibility of type. Lyra is a formal italic, too slow for copying books. By eliminating the element of speed, digital technology opens up a new level of calligraphy, bringing it into the sphere of typography as would naturally have happened if metalworkers had not controlled the process. If classical Western traditions are respected, digital calligraphy has the potential to recapture the work of the past and restart its stalled evolution. There is of course no substitute for the charm of actual writing, with each letter made for its space; but the tradeoff is for the formal harmony of classical calligraphy as every curve resonates in tune with every other. This three-weight font family marks Philip Bouwsma's much-requested return from a three year hiatus. It also reminds us of his solid vision in regards to how calligraphy, typography and technology can interact to produce digital beauty and vesatility. Each of the three Lyra fonts contains almost three character sets in a single file. Aside from the usual wealth of alternates normally built into Bouwsma's work, Lyra offers two unique features for the user who appreciates the availability of handy solutions to subtle design space issues: At least three (and as many as six) length variations on ascending and descending forms, and 65 snap-on swashes which can be attached to either end of the majuscules or minuscules. The series also offers 24 dividers and ornaments built into each weight, and a stand-alone font containing 90 stars/snowflakes/flowers, symmetric contstructs for building frames or separators, masking, watermarking, or just good old psychedelia.

Flaminia is a typeface family of 4 members designed by Carlos Fabián Camargo G. The central idea started as Dingbats and titles labeled with fine-tipped brushes and flat tip for graphic design related restaurant menus, instructions, packaging, food containers and labels. Thus began the process of drawings and letters integrated by shapes and counterblocks that seem inaccurate yet but at the same time clean and attractive. For this reason each variable suggests fresh brushstrokes that combine ideas from Roman and italic calligraphy. Flaminia members work separately or together by solving needs in different scenarios. This will enhance its properties in order to control and diagram titles, subtitles and short paragraphs with an effusive and manuscript character. Flaminia is useful for generating a flavor of "hand lettered by skilled artists lettering." In conclusion, Flaminia Regular and Italic are used to write short paragraphs. His ascending and downs are lower that the X height. Its width is imperceptibly condensed to save horizontal space. Its smooth lines and finishes simulating a crescent moon have been made with fine-tipped brush. The contrast between thick and thin has medium intensity. Its complement is an ideal italic to emphasize words and phrases. Its conceptual characteristics are similar with foundation's handwriting, except for his companion who takes ideas from the ornamental italic calligraphy. Flaminia Black is compact and ideal for ranking information such as words and titles. Its personality is based on ornamental penmanship italics mixed with humanistic ideas outlined with contrast-type, flat-tipped brush thickness. Its overall width is slightly condensed, rising and falling are short compared to an exaggerated X height. Its smooth lines and terminations as in a crescent moon simulate the path of a broad brush. Its amount of contrast between strokes have average intensity. In brief, push to the limit parameters such as the type and amount of contrast, size, backward, forward, overall width, etc. And finally, Flaminia Dingbats offers three sets of different illustrations, a total of almost 90 drawings useful in communications related to: Food, Clothes and Sketchy. Each carefully wrought through research, testing, analytical design, visual strategy and high-definition of Bezier paths, optimizing time and work to their users. And in conclusion, I have plans to continue expanding the family with more complete versions in the future.

TT Octosquares useful links: Specimen | Graphic presentation | Customization options TT Octosquares is a fresh, revised, expanded, and significantly improved version of our first commercial typeface TT Squares and its narrow version TT Squares Condensed. With all our love for the original font family, it felt there was a lack of functionality, character composition, features, and design freshness, which prompted us to the idea of a complete restart. Now TT Octosquares can be safely called a superfamily consisting of 4 widths (Compressed, Condensed, Standard, Expanded), 72 faces (18 in each width), and 1 incredible variable font in which variability works jointly on three axes. In addition to working on the contours themselves and their design, we completely revised the composition of the typeface. First, we added two completely new widths: Compressed and Expanded. Secondly, we increased the number of weights in each of the subfamilies—while in the old versions there were 5 weights, now in each of the subfamilies there are 9 weights. At the stage of working with the contours of characters, we revised the roundings, changed the forms of shoulder and stem crossings, added noticeable shelves at the letters, removed the sharpness from the triangular characters and cut off all sharp endings. From the very beginning of work on TT Octosquares, we planned to make a variable 3-axis version of it sewn into 1 font file. This means that by installing just one variable font file, you get access to three axial adjustment of the font: by thickness, width and inclination. Thanks to this flexibility in settings, you can always choose a custom combination of thickness, width or inclination that best suits your tasks. Due to the increased language support and the appearance of a bunch of useful OpenType features, the number of glyphs in the typeface has increased from 480 to 825 in each style. Now you can use stylistic alternates, standard and discretionary ligatures, or use old-style figures, numbers in circles and even slashed zeros in your design. Full list of features: aalt, mark, mkmk, ccmp, subs, sinf, sups, numr, dnom, frac, ordn, lnum, pnum, tnum, onum, case, zero, dlig, liga, salt, ss01, ss02, ss03, ss04, ss05, ss06, ss07, ss08, ss09, ss10, ss11, ss12, calt, locl. To use the variable font with three variable axes on Mac you will need MacOS 10.14 or higher. For other software and browsers, you can check the support status here: v-fonts.com/support/.

Since its foundation in 1901, the iconic building in the Rotterdam neighborhood Kop van Zuid, is shining. Where previously the Holland America Line was housed, you will now find Hotel New York. A building with a tremendous history. We’re glad to take you back in time with captivating memories. In 1991, catering entrepreneurs Daan van der Have, Hans Loos and Dorine de Vos refurbished the at the time vacant property into a hotel/restaurant. To honor its 25 years existence, we celebrate this happening with a brand-new font, ‘America Line’. A tribute to Wim ten Broek, the multi-talented Dutch Graphic Designer. As early as the 1930’s before the Second World War, Wim ten Broek made the famous posters for the Holland-America Line. The influence of A.M. Cassandre here in, is clearly recognizable. Wim ten Broek also worked for HAL with large surfaces and fixed lines in which primary colors dominate, accentuated with shadows acquired by spraying technique. He also made graphic works for, among others, the World Exhibition in New York, the Dutch railway company ‘Werkspoor’ and the royal Dutch steel factory ‘Hoogovens’. His drawings and lettering gave me a love for the trade and naturally gave me a completely different view on fonts. That’s how I slowly but surely made my way to the trade. Based on the letters I had at my disposal from the Holland – America Line poster, I started to complete the alphabet in the same style as the original text. I digitized everything in order to acquire a usable and modern font. The Holland America Line Font comes with uppercase and lowercase with all the needs of modern times to create a good digital font and to be able to use it for all graphic purposes. The font is ideal for headtext, posters, logos, etc... Don't hesitate and use this unique historical font! It will give your work that glamour that you will find in few fonts. Enjoy the Holland America Line. The Holland America Line Font comes with uppercase, lowercase, numerals, punctuations so you can use the Holland America Line font to customize all your designs. The Holland America Line font is designed by Coert De Decker in 2018 and published by Kustomtype Font Foundry. The Holland America Line Font can be used for all graphic purposes. It is ideal for headtext, posters, logos,  logos, letterhead, apparel design, package design, label design etc... Don't hesitate any longer and enjoy this unique historical font! It will give your work the glamour that you will only find in a few fonts. Enjoy your journey with the Holland America Line!

The ITC Stone Sans II typeface family is new from the drawing board up. Sumner Stone, who designed the original faces in 1988, recently collaborated with Delve Withrington and Jim Wasco of Monotype Imaging to update the family of faces that bears his name. Sumner was the lead designer and project director for the full-blown reworking – and his own greatest critic. The collaborative design effort began as a relatively simple upgrade to the ITC Stone Sans family. As so often happens, however, the upgrade proved to be not so simple, and grew into a major design undertaking. “My initial intent,” recalls Sumner, “was to provide ITC Stone Sans with even greater versatility. I planned to add an additional weight, maybe two, and to give the family some condensed designs.” As Sumner began to look more closely at his twenty-year-old typeface, he decided that it would benefit from more extensive design improvements. “I found myself making numerous refinements to character shapes and proportions,” says Sumner. “The project scope expanded dramatically, and I’m pleased with the final result. The redesign has improved both the legibility and the overall appearance of the face.” The original ITC Stone Sans is part of the ITC Stone super family, along with ITC Stone Serif and ITC Stone Informal. In 2005 ITC Stone Humanist joined the family. All of these designs have always offered the same three weights: Medium, Semibold, and Bold – each with an italic counterpart. Over time, Stone Sans has emerged as the godfather of the family, a powerful design used for everything from fine books, annual reports and corporate identity programs, to restaurant menus, movie credits and advertising campaigns. ITC Stone Sans, however, lacked one attribute of many sans serif families: a large range of widths and weights. “These fonts had enjoyed great popularity for many years – during which graphic designers repeatedly asked for more weights and condensed designs in the family,” says Sumner. “Their comments were the impetus.” ITC Stone Sans II includes six weights ranging from an elegant Light to a commanding Extra Bold. An italic counterpart and suite of condensed designs complements every weight. In all, the new family encompasses 24 typefaces. The ITC Stone Sans II family is also available as a suite of OpenType Pro fonts, allowing graphic communicators to pair its versatile design with the capabilities of OpenType. These fonts offer automatic insertion of ligatures, small caps and use-sensitive figure designs; their extended character set also supports most Central European and many Eastern European languages. ITC Stone® Sans II font field guide including best practices, font pairings and alternatives.

Gérard Mariscalchi is a self-made designer. Born in Southern France of a Spanish mother and an Italian father, he has worked as a mechanic, salesman, pilot, college teacher – even a poet (with poetry being the worst-paying of these professions, he reports.) “Throughout all this, the backbone of my career has always been design,” Mariscalchi says. “I’ve been drawing since I was five, but it wasn’t until I was twenty-four that I learned that my hobby could also help me earn a living.” It was about this same time that Mariscalchi fell in love with type. He studied the designs of masters like Excoffon, Usherwood and Frutiger, as well as the work of calligraphers and type designers such as Plantin, Cochin and Dürer. With such an eclectic background, it’s no surprise that Mariscalchi’s typeface designs are inspired by many sources. Baylac and Evita reflect the style of the art nouveau and art deco periods, while Marnie was created as an homage to the great Lithuanian calligrapher Villu Toots. However, the touch of French elegance and distinction Mariscalchi brings to his work is all his own. Baylac Who says thirteen is an unlucky number? Three capitals and ten lowercase letters from a poster by L. Baylac, a relatively obscure Art Nouveau designer, served as the foundation for this typeface. The finished design has lush curves that give the face drama without diminishing its versatility. On the practical side, Baylac’s condensed proportions make it perfect for those situations where there’s a lot to say and not much room in which to say it Evita Mariscalchi based the design of Evita on hand lettering he found in a restaurant menu, and considers this typeface one of his most difficult design challenges. “The main problem was to render the big weight difference between the thin and the thick strokes without creating printing problems at small point sizes,” he says. Unlike most scripts, Evita is upright, with the design characteristics of a serif typeface. Mariscalchi named the face for a close friend. The end result is a charming design that is light, airy, and slightly sassy. Marnie Based on Art Nouveau calligraphic lettering, Marnie is elegant, inviting, and absolutely charming. Mariscalchi paid special attention to letter shapes and proportions to guarantee high levels of character legibility. He also kept weight transition in character strokes to modest levels, enabling the face to be used at relatively small sizes – an unusual asset for a formal script. Marnie’s capital letters are expansive designs with flowing swash strokes that wrap affectionately around adjoining lowercase letters. The design easily captures the spontaneous qualities of hand-rendered brush lettering.

The idea behind designing ‘Matwin’ font was related to the youngest children of the designer namely the M-A fraternal twin. The name of the typeface (i.e., Matwin or M-A-Twin) was composed by merging three linguistic small syllables. The ‘-Twin’ syllable refers to the non-identical twin of the designer. The ‘M-’ and ‘A-’ syllables refer to the initial letters of the twin’s first names (i.e., Muhammad and Abdul-Wli) respectively. The typeface ‘Matwin’ has a personal trait which makes it as one of the most favorite fonts for the designer among his humble collection of fonts. Modestly, it is the designer’s handwriting and it has been designed to be added to the script font family known as brush un-joined. The brief process for having this typeface alive was done by firstly scanning the real script for each Latin letter, digit, symbol which were handwritten earlier by the designer himself. Then, the combination of these many scanned characters was manipulated using digital programs to produce at the end the complete typeface. The typeface has the essential glyphs comprising the character set required for most of the Latin, Western, and Eastern European languages including the Irish language. It combines +605 characters and this makes it as a pro font. It also entitles it to be applicable for usage in many languages of different communities and nations worldwide. ‘Matwin’ is dedicated for those who search for a genuine handwriting typeface with a natural touch and informal style to be added on their different published and produced products and services. It is more preferable when it is used in artistic, typographic, and other works using the lowercase letters or by mixing both upper- and lower-case letters. Moreover, the typeface is appropriate for any type of typographic and graphic designs in web, print, and other media such as boards and walls. It is also preferable to be used in the wide fields related to publications especially children-related ones, comics, printed or handwritten menus of cafeterias and restaurants at universities and public places, as well as other prints related to services and production industries. It also can create a very personal and friendly impact when used in headlines, books and novels’ covers, posters, titles, messages, envelopes addresses, grocery lists, postcards, ads, fliers, journals, paper arts, public notices, invitations, scrapbooks, notations, products’ surfaces for organic foods and juices, logos, medical packages related to children, Android applications, as well as products and corporates branding and the like. In a nutshell, ‘Matwin’ typeface fits without a glitch those (i.e., designers, typographers, publishers, artists, packagers, service providers, and so on) who have drastic and strong tendency towards imprinting their works with spontaneous and outlandish touches made by this typeface. Please, enjoy it extremely.

Gérard Mariscalchi is a self-made designer. Born in Southern France of a Spanish mother and an Italian father, he has worked as a mechanic, salesman, pilot, college teacher – even a poet (with poetry being the worst-paying of these professions, he reports.) “Throughout all this, the backbone of my career has always been design,” Mariscalchi says. “I’ve been drawing since I was five, but it wasn’t until I was twenty-four that I learned that my hobby could also help me earn a living.” It was about this same time that Mariscalchi fell in love with type. He studied the designs of masters like Excoffon, Usherwood and Frutiger, as well as the work of calligraphers and type designers such as Plantin, Cochin and Dürer. With such an eclectic background, it’s no surprise that Mariscalchi’s typeface designs are inspired by many sources. Baylac and Evita reflect the style of the art nouveau and art deco periods, while Marnie was created as an homage to the great Lithuanian calligrapher Villu Toots. However, the touch of French elegance and distinction Mariscalchi brings to his work is all his own. Baylac Who says thirteen is an unlucky number? Three capitals and ten lowercase letters from a poster by L. Baylac, a relatively obscure Art Nouveau designer, served as the foundation for this typeface. The finished design has lush curves that give the face drama without diminishing its versatility. On the practical side, Baylac’s condensed proportions make it perfect for those situations where there’s a lot to say and not much room in which to say it Evita Mariscalchi based the design of Evita on hand lettering he found in a restaurant menu, and considers this typeface one of his most difficult design challenges. “The main problem was to render the big weight difference between the thin and the thick strokes without creating printing problems at small point sizes,” he says. Unlike most scripts, Evita is upright, with the design characteristics of a serif typeface. Mariscalchi named the face for a close friend. The end result is a charming design that is light, airy, and slightly sassy. Marnie Based on Art Nouveau calligraphic lettering, Marnie is elegant, inviting, and absolutely charming. Mariscalchi paid special attention to letter shapes and proportions to guarantee high levels of character legibility. He also kept weight transition in character strokes to modest levels, enabling the face to be used at relatively small sizes – an unusual asset for a formal script. Marnie’s capital letters are expansive designs with flowing swash strokes that wrap affectionately around adjoining lowercase letters. The design easily captures the spontaneous qualities of hand-rendered brush lettering.

Gérard Mariscalchi is a self-made designer. Born in Southern France of a Spanish mother and an Italian father, he has worked as a mechanic, salesman, pilot, college teacher – even a poet (with poetry being the worst-paying of these professions, he reports.) “Throughout all this, the backbone of my career has always been design,” Mariscalchi says. “I’ve been drawing since I was five, but it wasn’t until I was twenty-four that I learned that my hobby could also help me earn a living.” It was about this same time that Mariscalchi fell in love with type. He studied the designs of masters like Excoffon, Usherwood and Frutiger, as well as the work of calligraphers and type designers such as Plantin, Cochin and Dürer. With such an eclectic background, it’s no surprise that Mariscalchi’s typeface designs are inspired by many sources. Baylac and Evita reflect the style of the art nouveau and art deco periods, while Marnie was created as an homage to the great Lithuanian calligrapher Villu Toots. However, the touch of French elegance and distinction Mariscalchi brings to his work is all his own. Baylac Who says thirteen is an unlucky number? Three capitals and ten lowercase letters from a poster by L. Baylac, a relatively obscure Art Nouveau designer, served as the foundation for this typeface. The finished design has lush curves that give the face drama without diminishing its versatility. On the practical side, Baylac’s condensed proportions make it perfect for those situations where there’s a lot to say and not much room in which to say it Evita Mariscalchi based the design of Evita on hand lettering he found in a restaurant menu, and considers this typeface one of his most difficult design challenges. “The main problem was to render the big weight difference between the thin and the thick strokes without creating printing problems at small point sizes,” he says. Unlike most scripts, Evita is upright, with the design characteristics of a serif typeface. Mariscalchi named the face for a close friend. The end result is a charming design that is light, airy, and slightly sassy. Marnie Based on Art Nouveau calligraphic lettering, Marnie is elegant, inviting, and absolutely charming. Mariscalchi paid special attention to letter shapes and proportions to guarantee high levels of character legibility. He also kept weight transition in character strokes to modest levels, enabling the face to be used at relatively small sizes – an unusual asset for a formal script. Marnie’s capital letters are expansive designs with flowing swash strokes that wrap affectionately around adjoining lowercase letters. The design easily captures the spontaneous qualities of hand-rendered brush lettering.

When Hal Taylor saw the 1930 logo for the Stetson Shoe Company of Weymouth, Massachusetts, he didn't run out and buy a pair of loafers. Instead, he seized on this striking example of an Art Deco logotype as the basis for a new typeface design. “I was impressed with the delicate and sophisticated letter forms,” Taylor recalls, “particularly the enlarged cap S -- in any other case it would have seemed unbalanced, but in the context of this logo, it worked perfectly.” All the letters in the original all-caps Stetson Shoe logo were rendered with condensed proportions except the O, which was a perfect circle. While the prominent O added visual interest to the logo, Taylor knew that such a character would limit his typeface to display applications. For versatility's sake, he drew his O for ITC Stepp with the same proportions as the rest of the alphabet. Taylor also gave the logotype's inverted S a more traditional design, but kept the original as an alternate character in the OpenType font. Taylor's toughest challenge during the design process was creating a lowercase. “A good type design tells you what it wants to be,” he says, “and after a little while the Stepp caps began to tell me what the lowercase should look like.” Taylor's lowercase is slightly more conventional than the caps. The jaunty g" and almost upside-down "s" add subtle charm, while the capital letters provide the broader gestures of Stepp's personality. Together, they create a versatile and distinctive typeface design. One of Hal Taylor's first jobs was as a photo-lettering typographer in Philadelphia, setting headlines and creating custom lettering. This was followed by a stint doing finished lettering for John Langdon, whose ambigrams appear in Dan Brown's best-selling novel, Angels & Demons. Today, Taylor works as a graphic designer in the publishing industry, but he still finds time to create an occasional hand-lettered book jacket, and draw handsome typeface designs. ITC Stepp is available in four weights, ranging from Light to Ultra Bold. All four weights have companion italics, and the lightest three weights also offer a suite of small caps."

First, the important information…Nori is a hand-lettered typeface that contains over 1100 glyphs, 250 ligatures, 487 alternate characters, 125+ swash and titling alternates, lining and old style numerals. To make sure it is perfectly clear—Nori is the result of brush and ink on paper. The textures produced in each glyph are real and the imperfections are intentional and add to the sincerity of the letters. I say this to be as blunt as possible in order to avoid confusion and to frame what this typeface represents—calligraphic, handwritten letters captured digitally for their warmth and poetic variation for print and screen. Like my handwritten, calligraphic or brush-driven faces before it (the Baka series and the TDC2 2010 winning typeface, Fugu), Nori is a product of my analog and digital hand. To view the words and sentences formed by this typeface is to look at how my hands, yes hands, make letters. The fluidity, as well as the irregularity, is human, honest and intentional—to do so lets the brush I am holding breathe life into each letter. Once digital, any number of points and repetitive processes can’t mask its influences—and I like that. The brush, a simple instrument, my tool, my friend designed to emulate traditional Japanese sumi-e brushes... the Pilot Japan Kanji Fude brush pen. Each letter, each variation was written over and over again until I found the right combination. From there, each was scanned, digitized and optimized. Points were removed in order to ‘clean’ the glyphs up some but I did not want to compromise the integrity of the actual brush stroke. Once this base set of characters (about 350) were completed, the thoughtful manipulation of the glyphs, their gestures and forms were further expanded to solidify the embellishments used within the ligatures, alternates, swashes and additional features. This process was admittedly self-indulgent to an extent. I wanted the words created with this typeface to have the flexibility of variation and cohesiveness of movement that someone fluidly producing these letters by hand might have.  I hope you enjoy this typeface as much as I did during the six months working on it. A specimen and style guide is included with the purchased of Nori.