Kisba Nova – A character actor that turns heads. Spiky serifs, soft ball terminals. All eyes on Kisba Nova: enter a typeface designed to arouse attention. Kisba Nova is that one guest who joins a party, and a murmur goes through the crowd. Kisba Nova is pure charisma. Opposites attract: Kisba Nova combines sharp wedge serifs and spiky spurs with round and soft ball terminals. Infuse this with a neoclassical stroke contrast and you get a thrilling typeface driven by visual extremes. Sure: Kisba Nova is a diva. But it’s a pro, after all. That’s why it comes in two optical sizes: Headline and Text. This makes sure it looks gorgeous in any situation. The Kisba Nova Headline subfamily is flaunts the trademark flamboyant looks and extravagant letters like f and k. They bring you all of the excitement of the showbiz in large applications—use it for sizes of 24 Pt. and more. The extraordinarily designed, thin and monolinear diacritics, punctuation marks, and symbols of Kisba Nova Headline add to this modern and elegant character. Kisba Nova Headline consists of seven weights from Thin to Black, offering plenty of possibilities to set headlines and titles. With about 600 characters per weight, it contains enough functionality for the demands of a skilled typographer. OpenType features, such as a large set of ligatures, extended language support, case-sensitive forms, different sets of figures, and arrows, enable sensational designs both in web & print layouts. The Kisba Nova Text subfamily comes with decreased contrast, more generous letter proportions, and wider spacing. Instead of employing flashy thin and monolinear diacritics, punctuation marks, and symbols, Kisba Nova Text aims for a more even texture on the page. It retains the true, elegant Kisba DNA while allowing you to set legible copy in sizes between 9 and 18 Pt. Nothing will distract your reader–Kisba Nova Text aims to please. Kisba Nova Text consists of seven weights from Thin to Black, offering plenty of possibilities to set body copy and subheadlines. With about 600 characters per weight, it contains enough functionality for the demands of a skilled typographer. OpenType features, such as a large set of ligatures, extended language support, case-sensitive forms, different sets of figures, and arrows, enable sensational designs both in web & print layouts. Kisba Nova celebrates the dual nature of softness and sharpness in a single typeface. It’s a character actor that turns heads.

IMPORTANT – Please consider the superior Carrig Pro before making a purchase decision. Carrig started its life in 1998. I was working for a design agency in Cork, Ireland and was given a new brand identity project for a lakeside hotel in County Kerry. While visiting the hotel I made various sketches of the surroundings and upon returning to the studio, it was clear that my strongest ideas for the identity would be based on these freehand drawings. I wanted a classic, rough, hand-drawn typeface to complement this style but at that time, the studio didn’t have anything suitable, so I decided to draw my own. I found a Trajan-esque typeface that I really liked the look of in an old calligraphy workbook. I set about drawing my own version and then digitised it. Once the client had seen and approved my design, I began working on creating a complete all caps typeface to use for the hotel’s stationery. With ‘carrig’ being the Gaelic word for ‘rock’, my new typeface was all the more appropriate as it had the appearance of letterforms that had been carved into stone and weathered by time. With the project completed and the client happy, Carrig then sat in my unused fonts folder for several years... but there was always a nagging feeling at the back of my mind that I should do something more with it. So, in the autumn of 2014, I finally set about doing just that and created the font family you now find at MyFonts. Carrig’s form and structure was influenced by a hybrid of Classic Roman and Garalde typeface designs. The original calligraphic elements from the 1998 version of Carrig have been retained to add personality—as can be seen in the serifs, strokes, spurs, terminals and open bowls. Perhaps its most distinctive trait is a high x-height combined with relatively short ascenders. I wanted Carrig to immediately resonate with the reader and have designed it to be familiar and friendly. I imagine designers might choose Carrig as an alternative to such typefaces as Trajan, Garamond and Baskerville. I see Carrig as primarily a display typeface for titles/headlines in printed materials. I would also love to see it being used for branding, packaging and promotional material and am keen to hear from designers who use it in their own work.

Think smart. Think regal. Think SteamCourt, a new font designed specifically for the card game SteamCourt. A bit of background if you will: In early 2014, some friends from my college days banded together to form their own game company. Their first launch? A current Kickstarter they named SteamCourt. I love Kickstarter. It’s a fantastic platform, a great way for individuals to introduce the public to their visions. I've started a couple of them myself--both including fonts designed specifically for the projects. The first is Chatype, a font created exclusively for the city of Chattanooga. The second: Cabrito, a font developed as part of the children’s typeface book, The Clothes Letters Wear. It’s wonderful to work with so many others who come alongside to help you vision become reality. Naturally, hearing of my friends' project, I contacted them about adding a new face to their venture as well. I gave them carte blanche. They wanted steampunk. It was a great challenge, the result of which is now SteamCourt, an unforgettable display typeface that draws from the mix of Victorian regals, metallic and brass engineering, cogs, clocks and blackletter typography. It evokes a time of skillfully forged metalwork and an era of intrigue and excitement, filled with audacious feats of engineering and innovation and the perilous journeys of the airship. While influenced by the era of blackletter, SteamCourt is an unmistakable departure from the style of two centuries past, yet it still shines in its given display roles with a distinct regal twist. The serifs are asymmetrical, yet the characters are all specially and delicately balanced. It’s an eye-catching alternative to blackletter with modern steampunk touches. The game’s signature typeface has sizeable language support on top of 90 alternate characters as well. In addition to a generous number contextual alternates, SteamCourt features stylistic alternates that allow for buyers to customize its visual appearance for their preferences, helping to make it a superior option for packaging, branding and enormous typesetting logotypes as well as shorter textual content. Check out the game, but grab the font, too, to be a part of that crib created as a companion for the new game in court. It'll be the ace up your sleeve for many rounds of design ahead.

A sign of something better When designer Stuart de Rozario surveyed the fonts used in signage on London’s public transport systems, he reached a dead end. They seemed staid, sterile, lacking in personality, and ill-suited to use by modern brands. He was pointed in another direction entirely. ‘The driving force behind my thoughts was to design something more current and fresh without compromising legibility and clarity. A font with both personality and function, that’s versatile and large and small sizes, and effortless to read, but which also says something new.’ Speed reading Late for a meeting and can’t find your way? Trying to catch a flight? Lost in a hospital? Reading signs is a different business to reading a book or a newspaper. Text on signs needs to be deciphered quickly and effortlessly. So the legibility criteria for signage letterforms are different to those for normal reading, too. Throughout FS Millbank’s uppercase and lowercase alphabets, characters have been given features for extra definition, including: wide ink traps on the A, K, M, V, W, X and Y; a serifed i, accentuated spurs on the a, d, l u; and different x-height shapes on the b, g, p and q. Distinctive forms and generous, open internal shapes all help the quick reading of sign text, and wide, open terminals and counters allow similar letter shapes to be distinguished easily when viewed at different angles. Running down a corridor, maybe... Positive/negative Standard type tends to glow on the kind of dark backgrounds often used for signage, and look heavier than its true weight. To correct the imbalance caused by this optical trick, special weights of the typeface have to be drawn for these ‘negative’, light-on-dark applications. These are lighter than their comparable positive weights to overcome the ‘glow’ effect. After extensive tests of the negative weights, at all sizes, we achieved the right optical balance. Glowing, glowing, gone. Icons This wouldn’t be a signage typeface without its own set of icons, or symbols, to help people find what they’re looking for. So, to sit alongside the positive and negative fonts, we’ve created a comprehensive set of 172 icons, covering a wide range of applications from transport and user interface to information and directional. Designed within the typeface capital height, they sit on the baseline and are spaced centrally.

‘Krul’ is a typographic interpretation of the lettering style created by Dutch letter painter Jan Willem Joseph Visser at the end of the 1940s, which decorated the traditional brown bars of Amsterdam. In the beginning, these letters were strongly associated with the pubs connected to the Amstel brewery, given that Visser was the company’s official painter. As the years passed, the style became increasingly popular, and various business owners in Amsterdam and other Dutch and Belgian cities also commissioned its use. In the 1970s and 1980s, Leo Beukeboom, another talented letter painter, continued and expanded this lettering tradition while employed under the Heineken brand. Much of his work can still be found in the Jordaan and De Pijp neighborhoods in Amsterdam. The Amsterdamse Krulletter, or Amsterdam’s curly letter, is strongly inspired by the calligraphic works of the 17th century Dutch writing masters, of which Jan van den Velde was a central figure. However, distinct characteristics of this style, for example, its unusual and beautiful ‘g’, originate from a model that was published by Johannes Heuvelman in 1659, which J. W. J. Visser referenced. Typographic circles have somehow overlooked the Amsterdamse Krulletter and its heritage. The Dutch calligraphic hands preceded and influenced the formal English penmanship which has inspired numerous typefaces in the Copperplate style. In contrast, the models from van den Velde, Heuvelman, and Jean de la Chambre, among others, are a missing chapter in Dutch typographic history, and had never been turned into typefaces until now. Conscious of the cultural and identity issues that arise in reviving a unique style, and concerned about the speed with which the lettering style was disappearing, Ramiro Espinoza focused the project of designing ‘Krul’ on digitally recreating the calligraphic complexity of these beautiful letters. Created through several years of research, ‘Krul’ is not a direct digitization of the Amsterdamse Krulletter, but instead, an interpretation that incorporates numerous alternative characters absent in the original model, and improves upon details where necessary, resulting in an optimal performance on the printed page. The typeface is presented in Open Type format, with an abundance of intricate ligatures, fleurons, and swashes, which permit the creation of numerous calligraphic effects. The very high contrast and rhythm of the strokes in this typeface make it especially suited for media applications conveying a sense of elegance and sophistication. Designers of feminine magazines, advertisements, and corporate identities within the fragrance and fashion industries will find in this typeface to be an extremely useful and appropriate resource.The great Amsterdamse Krulletter is finally back, and we are proud to make it available to you.

Jugendstil Initials were designed by Heinrich Vogeler around 1905, based on the German blackletter tradition. A similar set of initials by Vogeler, but based on roman letters was released by Rudhardsche Geisserei of Offenbach at about this time. I believe the originals were woodcuts. The backgrounds to the letterforms may be seen as examples of Heimatkunst, an art movement within Germany that drew deliberate inspiration from the rural countryside. Like the Arts and Crafts Movement in England a little earlier, Heimatkunst may be seen, in part, as a romantic rejection of urban industrialization, while at the same time representing a back-to-roots nationalism. Like any river, it was fed by many streams. Jugendstil Initials is an experiment with which I am most pleased. It is far and away the most complex font HiH has produced and I was uncertain whether or not it could be done successfully. To oversimplify, a font is produced by creating outlines of each character, using points along the outline to define the contour. A simple sans-serif letter A with crossbar can be created using as few as 10 points. We decided to make a comparison of the number of points we used to define the uppercase A in various fonts. Cori, Gaiety Girl and Page No 508 all use 12 points. Patent Reclame uses 39 and Publicity Headline uses 43. All the rest of the A’s, except the decorative initials, fall somewhere in between. The initial letters run from 48 points for Schnorr Initials to 255 for Morris Initials Two, with 150 being about average. Then there is a jump to 418 points for Morris Initials One and, finally, to 1626 points for Jugendstil Initials. And this was only after we selectively simplified the designs so our font creation software (Fontographer) could render them. The average was 1678, not including X and Y. There was no X and Y in the original design and we have provided simple stand-ins to fill out the alphabet, without trying to imitate the style of the orginal design. We did a lot of looking to find a compatible lower case. We decided that Morris Gothic from the same period was the best match in color, design and historical context. We felt so strongly about the choice that we decided to produce our Morris Gothic font for the purpose of providing a lower case for Jugendstil Initials. The long s, as well as the ligatures ch and ck are provided. at 181, 123 (leftbrace) and 125 (rightbrace) respectively. This font was a lot of work, but I think it was worth it. I hope you agree.

Oxford Street is a signage font that began as a redrawing of the capital letters used for street nameplates in the borough of Westminster in Central London. The nameplates were designed in 1967 by the Design Research Unit using custom lettering based on Adrian Frutiger’s Univers typeface, a curious combination of Univers 69 Bold Ultra Condensed, a weight that doesn’t seem to exist but which would flatten the long curves of glyphs such as O, C and D, and Universe 67 Bold Condensed with its more rounded lobes on glyphs like B, P and R. Letters were then remodelled to improve their use on street signs. Thin strokes like the inner diagonals of M and N were thickened to create a more monolinear alphabet; the high interior apexes were lowered and the wide joins thinned. The crossbar of the A was lowered, the K was made double junction, and the tail of the Q was given a baseline curve. K-Type Oxford Street continues the process of impertinent improvement and includes myriad minor adjustments and several more conspicuous amendments. The stroke junctions of M and N are further narrowed and their interior apexes modified. The middle apex of the W is narrowed and the glyph is a little more condensed. The C and S are drawn more open, terminals slightly shortened. The K-Type font adds a new lowercase which is also made more monolinear so better suited to signage, loosely based on Univers but also taking inspiration from the Transport typeface both in a taller x-height and character formation. The lowercase L has a curled foot, the k is double junctioned to match the uppercase, and terminals of a, c, e, g and s are drawn shorter for openness and clarity. A full repertoire of Latin Extended-A characters features low-rise diacritics that keep congestion to a minimum in multiple lines of text. The font tips the hat to signage history by including stylistic alternates for M, W and w that have the pointed middles of the earlier MOT street sign typeface. Incidentally, Alistair Hall (‘London Street Signs’, Batsford, 2020) notes that when the manufacturer of signs was changed in 2007, Helvetica Bold Condensed was substituted in place of the custom design, “an unfortunate case of an off-the-peg suit replacing a tailored one” and a blunder that has happily since been rectified, though offending nameplates can still be spotted by discerning font fans.