Sleeve Notes: A font from the analogue age. Inspired by album covers and hand-written song lyrics. Sleeve Notes is an experimental script font and all-caps pair with a loose hand-written style that explores the golden-age of record stores, vinyl albums, cassettes and CDs. It imagines our teenage selves kicking back with a coke (oversized headphones on) discovering a new band and studying the notes on their latest album. Besides production credits, the best sleeves (otherwise known as liner notes) included photos, cool artwork and hand-written song lyrics that gave the listener a human connection to the mind of the artist. This font embraces it's subtle ink blotches and rough edges; all imperfections that build to create a sense of a hastily written lyric, set-list or just a fun little scribble. The package includes six fonts in total; the regular script with two complete sets of alternatives, then two sets of all-caps, and finally the special characters font that features a decorative alphabet plus symbols and underlines. For authentically retro, hand-made looking lettering, it's a great choice and offers the flexibility few other fonts can match. Check out all the visuals to see it action!

BOOMSONG is a stunning font that combines the beauty of blackletter and the elegance of script styles. It features a unique mix of these two styles, creating a perfect balance between boldness and refinement. The font includes 858 glyphs, offering a wide range of options for all your design needs. With its unique alternates and ligatures, BOOMSONG allows you to create custom lettering that stands out and captures the eye. It supports PUA encoding, ensuring that you can access all glyphs and symbols, even in non-standard software. BOOMSONG is perfect for projects that require a touch of beauty and sophistication. Its concept of “beauty in the dark” adds an intriguing element to your designs, making them stand out from the rest. With support for multiple languages, BOOMSONG is a versatile font that can be used for various purposes, from branding to invitations, book covers, and more. Language Support : Latin, Basic, Western European, Central European, South European,Vietnamese. In order to use the beautiful swashes, you need a program that supports OpenType features such as Adobe Illustrator CS, Adobe Photoshop CC, Adobe Indesign and Corel Draw. but if your software doesn’t have Glyphs panel, you can install additional swashes font files.

ManRay is a photogenic typefamily of 6 fonts designed by @andinistas, with more than 2600 glyphs distributed in 3 Scripts and 3 Caps. Its shapes are ideal for attention-grabbing and for its eloquent character set, each style is presented with three levels of erosion planned with meticulous dotted texture bézier drawing, diagonal texture, and vertical texture pattern. ManRay Script, Script2, Script3 is based on calligraphy made with a fine tip brush and therefore communicates pleasant and attractive ideas. Its capital letters measure three times the height of the lower case and stand out for its artistic curved lines ideal for writing on photos, logos, labels, packaging, posters, covers of food products, spirits, organic teas, etc. In that order, it also offers other expressive alternate letters that activate spontaneously, and each of the three styles is case-infinite with and without Swash, Stylistic, and Titling Alternates. ManRay Caps, Caps2, Caps3 are inspired by calligraphic Roman letters drawn with a brush with a square tip and are equipped with descending flourishes for word start and end. The core of ManRay mixes the ideas of Ed Benguiat and Ross F. George and its name is a tribute to the Dada hero who changed history a century ago by working against the conventions of art and photography.

Pyke's Peak is a spirit type descended from Paeleoflex: The Angel of the Odd. Wraith-like forms mix Roman inscriptional letters with an ar'deco theme for an ethereal graphic art effect. Suitable for magazines and editorial design, book jackets & interiors, posters & broadsides, art & craft objects and other things needing a touch of the extraordinary. Over 500 extra characters give Pyke's Peak unusual range and ability. Mirror capitals, phantom forms, dot phantoms, "superposed" (overlapping) ligatures, capitalized ligatures and fitted pairs for hours of trippy rub-down arcadian magic. Includes hanging numerals, lining numerals, full punctuation, standard math & monetary symbols. Accented characters for Latin 1 and Latin 2 cover the following languages: Albanian, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish and Swedish. Available in OpenType format only. Pykes Peak comes in two versions: (1) Pyke's Peak the full-blown OpenType version with over 500 extra characters, (2) Pyke's Peak Zero, the zero cost version with full Latin 1 & 2 character set but no extra characters. Pyke's Peak Zero is free to download, is licensed for commercial and personal (non-profit) use, and may be embedded on webpages using the CSS @font-face property. This typeface is dedicated to Australian musician James "Jock" Paull, who is a free spirit.

World Discovery is a stunning calligraphy font that exudes a sense of beauty, romance, and exploration. The artistic swirls and slanted serifs come together to create a distinctive, high-quality, and exclusive typeface that will bring an antique charm to your designs. World Discovery has its origin in 15th-century discovery maps. Designer Mans Greback procured maps from the state library, and the exquisite penmanship and intricate details on the map, showcasing the venture of exploration and the grandeur of the Age of Discovery, sparked the unique and evocative letterforms that now make up the World Discovery font. The font offers an impressive array of 19 styles, including six distinctive main styles, their italic versions, as well as light, regular, and bold weights, as well as a Swash style for added flair. Combining the fonts gives you infinite possibilities to create a truly customized typographical artwork. The font is built with advanced OpenType functionality and has a guaranteed top-notch quality, containing stylistic and contextual alternates, ligatures, and more features; all to give you full control and customizability. It has extensive lingual support, covering all Latin-based languages, from Northern Europe to South Africa, from America to South-East Asia. It contains all characters and symbols you'll ever need, including all punctuation and numbers.

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: [ \ ] ^ _ { | } ~ ¢ £ ¤ ¥ ¦ § €

Visible is a dynamic typeface family designed by CFCG @andinistas. Visible Script has narrow horizontal spacing between lowercase, while Visible Script 2 has generous and wide horizontal spacing. Mixing both styles you will achieve italic designs loaded with speed and strength to communicate aggressiveness, nervous and sanguine temperament. Visible Caps contains capital letters derived from the font's writing, but drawn aggressively and slanted 15 degrees to the right. This type of visual characteristic is typical of very fast and nervous writing that is performed with emotion without sacrificing harmony. a monolineal and condensed version is the Visible caps 2, allowing for significant horizontal space saving economies. Used Visible Caps 1 and 2, become much more than just an expressive and functional artistic tool. In short, by combining their expressive writing or Visible Caps & Script lettering styles, they make words and phrases appear to be written with a brush and ink-filled calligraphic strokes and with eye-catching qualities, their design is the perfect choice for distinctive headlines and brand identities. for music, movies, video games and more. A special thanks to the Venezuelan artist for his impressive illustrations @franciscomarin_artistaplastico ENJOY more than 1100 glyphs: + Visible Script: 398 glyphs + Visible Script2: 221 glyphs + Visible Caps: 222 glyphs + Visible Caps2: 298 glyphs

The original brief for Vox was a extensive monoline typeface that can be both precise and friendly, yet contain enough choice of seamlessly interchangeable variants for the user to be able to completely transform the personality of the typeface depending on the application. Basically, a sans serif with applications that range from clean and transparent information relay to sleek and angular branding. When the first version of Vox was released in 2007, it became an instant hit with interface designers, product packagers, sports channels, transport engineers and electronics manufacturers. This new version (2013) is the expanded treatment, which is even more dedicated to the original idea of abundant application flexibility. The family was expanded to five weights and two widths, with corresponding italics, for a total of 20 fonts. Each font contains 1240 glyphs. Localization includes Cyrillic and Greek, as well as extended Latin language support. Built-in OpenType features include small caps, caps to small caps, four completely interchangeable sytlistic alternates sets, automatic fractions, six types of figures, ordinals, and meticulous class-based kerning. This kind of typeface malleability is not an easy thing to come by these days. For additional versatility, take a look at Vox Round, the softer, but just as extensive, counterpart to this family.

Meet Arlen, a funky, variable type family in 36 styles. Inspired by 20th century hand-painted signs and the visual culture of the 1980's, Arlen adds a little extra to this already charismatic mix. Arlen is a display sans serif that can be freely used for larger bodies of text. Among its most prominent visual features are high contrast, flaring stems and dynamic letterforms. With 860 characters in each font, Arlen supports most Latin-based languages and offers a large number of extra characters, dingbats, alternate glyphs, ligatures, and punctuation marks. Some of the most useful OpenType features are included too, such as Case-Sensitive Punctuation, Stylistic Alternates, Tabular Figures, Fractions, Localization, and a lot more. Some letters and characters come in two versions: thin and bold, and you can easily alternate between the two using a corresponding stylistic set. Arlen is a cheerful typeface that conveys kindness, good cheer, and only good vibes. It would feel at home both in digital and print mediums; it can be used in advertising, editorial design, social media, web design, packaging, or personal design projects. With versatility at its heart, Arlen would be a perfect typeface for large design systems that require multiple styles for typesetting.

The concept of the Baroque Roman type face is something which is remote from us. Ungrateful theorists gave Baroque type faces the ill-sounding attribute "Transitional", as if the Baroque Roman type face wilfully diverted from the tradition and at the same time did not manage to mature. This "transition" was originally meant as an intermediate stage between the Aldine/Garamond Roman face of the Renaissance, and its modern counterpart, as represented by Bodoni or Didot. Otherwise there was also a "transition" from a slanted axis of the shadow to a perpendicular one. What a petty detail led to the pejorative designation of Baroque type faces! If a bookseller were to tell his customers that they are about to choose a book which is set in some sort of transitional type face, he would probably go bust. After all, a reader, for his money, would not put up with some typographical experimentation. He wants to read a book without losing his eyesight while doing so. Nevertheless, it was Baroque typography which gave the world the most legible type faces. In those days the craft of punch-cutting was gradually separating itself from that of book-printing, but also from publishing and bookselling. Previously all these activities could be performed by a single person. The punch-cutter, who at that time was already fully occupied with the production of letters, achieved better results than he would have achieved if his creative talents were to be diffused in a printing office or a bookseller's shop. Thus it was possible that for example the printer John Baskerville did not cut a single letter in his entire lifetime, for he used the services of the accomplished punch-cutter John Handy. It became the custom that one type founder supplied type to multiple printing offices, so that the same type faces appeared in various parts of the world. The type face was losing its national character. In the Renaissance period it is still quite easy to distinguish for example a French Roman type face from a Venetian one; in the Baroque period this could be achieved only with great difficulties. Imagination and variety of shapes, which so far have been reserved only to the fine arts, now come into play. Thanks to technological progress, book printers are now able to reproduce hairstrokes and imitate calligraphic type faces. Scripts and elaborate ornaments are no longer the privilege of copper-engravers. Also the appearance of the basic, body design is slowly undergoing a change. The Renaissance canonical stiffness is now replaced with colour and contrast. The page of the book is suddenly darker, its lay-out more varied and its lines more compact. For Baroque type designers made a simple, yet ingenious discovery - they enlarged the x-height and reduced the ascenders to the cap-height. The type face thus became seemingly larger, and hence more legible, but at the same time more economical in composition; the type area was increasing to the detriment of the margins. Paper was expensive, and the aim of all the publishers was, therefore, to sell as many ideas in as small a book block as possible. A narrowed, bold majuscule, designed for use on the title page, appeared for the first time in the Late Baroque period. Also the title page was laid out with the highest possible economy. It comprised as a rule the brief contents of the book and the address of the bookseller, i.e. roughly that which is now placed on the flaps and in the imprint lines. Bold upper-case letters in the first line dramatically give way to the more subtle italics, the third line is highlighted with vermilion; a few words set in lower-case letters are scattered in-between, and then vermilion appears again. Somewhere in the middle there is an ornament, a monogram or an engraving as a kind of climax of the drama, while at the foot of the title-page all this din is quietened by a line with the name of the printer and the year expressed in Roman numerals, set in 8-point body size. Every Baroque title-page could well pass muster as a striking poster. The pride of every book printer was the publication of a type specimen book - a typographical manual. Among these manuals the one published by Fournier stands out - also as regards the selection of the texts for the specimen type matter. It reveals the scope of knowledge and education of the master typographers of that period. The same Fournier established a system of typographical measurement which, revised by Didot, is still used today. Baskerville introduced the smoothing of paper by a hot steel roller, in order that he could print astonishingly sharp letters, etc. ... In other words - Baroque typography deserves anything else but the attribute "transitional". In the first half of the 18th century, besides persons whose names are prominent and well-known up to the present, as was Caslon, there were many type founders who did not manage to publish their manuals or forgot to become famous in some other way. They often imitated the type faces of their more experienced contemporaries, but many of them arrived at a quite strange, even weird originality, which ran completely outside the mainstream of typographical art. The prints from which we have drawn inspiration for these six digital designs come from Paris, Vienna and Prague, from the period around 1750. The transcription of letters in their intact form is our firm principle. Does it mean, therefore, that the task of the digital restorer is to copy meticulously the outline of the letter with all inadequacies of the particular imprint? No. The type face should not to evoke the rustic atmosphere of letterpress after printing, but to analyze the appearance of the punches before they are imprinted. It is also necessary to take account of the size of the type face and to avoid excessive enlargement or reduction. Let us keep in mind that every size requires its own design. The longer we work on the computer where a change in size is child's play, the more we are convinced that the appearance of a letter is tied to its proportions, and therefore, to a fixed size. We are also aware of the fact that the computer is a straightjacket of the type face and that the dictate of mathematical vectors effectively kills any hint of naturalness. That is why we strive to preserve in these six alphabets the numerous anomalies to which later no type designer ever returned due to their obvious eccentricity. Please accept this PostScript study as an attempt (possibly futile, possibly inspirational) to brush up the warm magic of Baroque prints. Hopefully it will give pleasure in today's modern type designer's nihilism.

Komu is the revival of a style of letters frequently used on billboards during the socialist period in the former Czechoslovakia. These were usually uppercase letters made of paper and covered with a layer of aluminum foil. People just had to pick the letters (that included a variety of widths and sizes) out from a box and pin them up on a styrofoam billboard, thus making it easy to announce any event. Komu consists of two styles. Version A is rather squarish and includes some weird characters (K, 5, narrow E, strange diacritics) while version B is more rounded with most letters equally wide (with the exception of E, F and L, which look really wide next to the rest). The optical disparity of the original letters was kept, so that some of them look slightly darker than the others. Komu is intended to be used on posters, books and other products about Socialism in our region and includes full support for languages based on latin script.

When ITC Officina was first released in 1990, as a paired family of serif and sans serif faces in two weights with italics, it was intended as a workhorse typeface for business correspondence. But the typeface proved popular in many more areas than correspondence. Erik Spiekermann, ITC Officina's designer: Once ITC Officina got picked up by the trendsetters to denote 'coolness,' it had lost its innocence. No pretending anymore that it only needed two weights for office correspondence. As a face used in magazines and advertising, it needed proper headline weights and one more weight in between the original Book and Bold."" To add the new weights and small caps, Spiekermann collaborated with Ole Schaefer, director of typography and type design at MetaDesign. The extended ITC Officina family now includes Medium, Extra Bold, and Black weights with matching italics-all in both Sans and Serif -- as well as new small caps fonts for the original Book and Bold weights.

Sinkwitz Gotisch is a new release of the font of the same name originally designed by Paul Sinkwitz in 1942. The Sinkwitz Gotisch was 1942 by Schriftguss AG Dresden font cast first cast and later supplied by the East German firm VEB Typoart. Paul Sinkwitz (1899-1981) has created them. This font displays not the characteristics of a chunky Gothic, which have influenced the image of national socialism. Paul Sinkwitz was a painter, graphic artist, wood engraver, was interested in religious topics, which he had presented in numerous graphics. But also his interpretation of his Gothic font is modern, without having the font this is ugly. In addition to the GOTISCH he created Roman Uppercase letters, which perfectly harmonize with the lowercase letters. This extra font is called BASTARD. The digital version of Sinkwitz is a beneficial addition to a Gothic with calligraphic character and should be in any historically interested graphic design.

Let it be known that this font is named for Excalibur, King Arthur's Magic Sword. The font is derived from a note that Arthur hastily penned to his Queen, Guinevere, during a lull in one of his many battles against the Saxons. Arthur's armour was so hefty that he could not easily seat himself, and so to pen his letter to Guinevere he plunged his legendary sword Excalibur into the marshy soil on which he had been fighting and thereby steadied his writing hand with the hasp of his magical sword. This ancient and battle-weary font is based on the writing from a fragment of that original document. It has been heralded by modern scholars as "grunge" writing of great antiquity. The font Excalibur SCF contains a full character set and it is professionally letterspaced and kerned. Use this font to create a feeling of haste, of authentic ancient history, of magical times, of chivalry, of dragons and of brave battles fought.

Baro is a powerful, fun and expressive font, great for loud, cheerful and super-fat headlines and packaging for odd novelty toys. With its bold and distinctive stylized geometric forms, it is ideal for logos, heavy machinery and wacky party invites. Baro had its beginning in a handful of rigidly geometric uppercase letters from an unidentified 1960�s or 70�s era press-down lettering font, which in turn was possibly a revival of a 20�s era Art Deco font. The exercise quickly expanded into a complete typeface with 300+ characters, including several catch words (word glyphs), stylistic alternates, discretionary ligatures, multilingual support and both lining and old style numerals. Baro maintains much of the characteristic geometric rigidity of the original handful of letters, but � With the addition of just a little bit of flare, a bit of cheerfulness breaks through, like a wink and a smile on the face of a fat and otherwise stern policeman.

Known sometimes as “utopia”, “journey” other times, but also named with name´s place where one wants to go, “Ithaca” home of Ulysses. Typographic Cartesian coordinates are usually two, from the skeleton, the narrower, to the black, the widest. Nowadays, Maese Patau had traveled a road made by four Cartesian axes of typographic geography. A road from thick to thin, from expanded to condensed, to offer us a new family, a larger and extensive series than the traditional family. 48 “relatives” in a pure neo-grotesque font, with a large “eye” that makes it especially suitable for display. Solid hinting in small sizes due to it´s pure and simple basic forms. The jazzy cursive, available in all weights, looks as a simply slanted letter, but when works in conjunction with its regular version, generates an outstanding typographic game. As usual, Maese Patau offer us a extensive typeface in weights, extensive on supported languages, and all kind of OpenType´s capabilities.

Tinteretto is a very beautiful, decorative Art-d�co font which is ideal for ad design about fine arts events and the world of arts and crafts as well as in restaurants, bars and for food packaging. Tintoretto harmonizes well with serif and sans serif fonts created at the beginning of the last century. It contains character sets for West and Central European as well as for Romania and Turkey. When Unger started his work on Tintoretto, he had the splendid idea of adding a Fill version to the original 3D characters. Combining both fonts make it even stronger and more beautiful. How to combine both fonts in order to achieve a color fill effect: Type your word or phrase and do not make any changes to the spacing or kerning. Duplicate or copy the original and change it to the Fill version (font change). Apply a color to the copy and position it exactly behind the original. See and love the result.

Frederic Goudy joined Lanston as art advisor in 1920. One of his first initiatives was to design a new version of Garamond based on original Garamond designs of 1540. Goudy intended his free-hand drawings to be cut exactly as he had drawn them and fought with the workmen at Lanston to keep them from “correcting” his work. This new type was called Garamont (an acceptable alternate spelling) to distinguish it from other Garamonds on the market. (The other Garamonds on the market at that time were later confirmed to be the work of Jean Jannon.) In 2001, Jim Rimmer digitized Garamont in two weights. The display weight is based on the actual metal outlines to compensate slightly for the ink gain that occurs with letterpress printing. The text weight is a touch heavier and more appropriate for general offset and digital text work. Digital Garamont is available to the public for the first time in 2005.

When ITC Officina was first released in 1990, as a paired family of serif and sans serif faces in two weights with italics, it was intended as a workhorse typeface for business correspondence. But the typeface proved popular in many more areas than correspondence. Erik Spiekermann, ITC Officina's designer: Once ITC Officina got picked up by the trendsetters to denote 'coolness,' it had lost its innocence. No pretending anymore that it only needed two weights for office correspondence. As a face used in magazines and advertising, it needed proper headline weights and one more weight in between the original Book and Bold."" To add the new weights and small caps, Spiekermann collaborated with Ole Schaefer, director of typography and type design at MetaDesign. The extended ITC Officina family now includes Medium, Extra Bold, and Black weights with matching italics-all in both Sans and Serif -- as well as new small caps fonts for the original Book and Bold weights.

Designed in 1950s Japan by Okanao & Kushiro, the perfect partnership until artistic temperaments drove them apart. The duo spent years crafting the font with the working title “Messenjā”, Okanao bringing technical expertise to craft letterforms, while Kushiro made it his life, obsessively working late into the night to check pages for errors. For him the project was never about making money, it was an artistic endeavor to reprint the great Western works of literature. When he found out Okanao had secretly sold the rights to the font for use as a logo for a major Japanese manufacturer, Kushiro burned all evidence of the designs in a fit of passionate fury. The two reportedly never spoke again. “Messenjā” was thought lost forever until a type specimen was discovered in a vintage typewriter box bought on eBay. Now redrawn and available as 57-nao, a faithful and beautifully crafted monospace characterized by what is considered Okanao’s defining moment, the angular loop on the lowercase ‘a’.

The Rostrum fonts are a revival and expansion of a type called Oleander, designed in 1938 by Julius Kirn for the Genzsch & Heyse foundry in Hamburg. Many of the original uppercase letters had some blackletter remnants tacked onto them, so in this digital version they were relegated to the Rostrum Two font, while more contemporary forms were designed for the Rostrum One font. Characters from both fonts are interchangeable via software programs' font menus and glyph palettes in the Postscript and True Type versions, while the OpenType version takes advantage of the Ligatures, Contextual Alternates and Stylistic Alternates features to perform character substitutions. Rostrum finds the middle ground between italic and brush script, which makes it quite usable in all-caps settings. Its majuscules have a very distinct curl that makes the typeface effect-ready and very appealing in packaging design. Plenty of alternates and ligatures are sprinkled throughout the character set.

The retail storage box for a vintage metal numbering stamp manufactured by the American Numbering Machine Company had its brand name hand lettered in an Art Nouveau style that most likely went back to the 1920s, as the company was in existence from 1908 to around 1971. Numbering machines were used in offices, schools, libraries, and anywhere a series of numbers needed to be marked onto printed items. Similar to what was called a ‘crash numberer’ used in letterpress shops, the machines could be set to do a run of digits [for example: 4000, 4001, 4002] or repeat numbers for forms used as carbon copies. As computers took over most forms of printing, the use of numbering machines dwindled, but they are still available. The American Numbering Machine Company was one of several Brooklyn, New York companies that specialized in the manufacture of these machines. Retail Packaging JNL replicates the lettering from their packaging, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

The Roundup family was inspired by fonts from the late 19th century, though it is not based on any one of them. Roundup-Caps was the first of the group to be constructed. It has two sets of upper-case letters that have minor differences. It has reverse contrast, that is, the verticals are thinner than the horizontals. Unlike most of the "Old-West" fonts with reverse contrast, the serifs are not square but have an odd, rounded shape. Roundup-Regular replaced the second set of caps with lower-case letters. A bold style strengthens the vertical elements so that it no longer has reverse contrast. Both the regular and bold styles have matching oblique styles. Finally, there is a hollow version with a shadow to the lower right. This shadowed style has had its inside taken out, creating RoundUp-ShadowInside. The spacing is the same as RoundUpShadowed so it can be layered over RoundUpShadowed to easily create two-colored lettering.

Époque Seria is that kind of person who looks really cute when angry. This font was derived from the Époque family. She is the little sister to Époque - a little shorter with her smaller x-height and — how do you say it in the typographic circle — your eyes are also smaller (and you know you squint when things get serious, isn't it?). The genealogy of these font face is undeniable, but Époque Seria has a ‘personality’ very different from her older sister. The reduction of the x-height also shakes somewhat with the cap that had crossbar. To accompany the package of standardization, the letters that don't have their straight axes were changed, which brought to the set more Cs and Gs contemporaries. In addition, other measures were taken as a greater softness in the variation of the weights and the abandonment of the black weight, being considered too heavy for this version.

Many decades back, churches, schools and other buildings with a need to display an outdoor message often chose a sign making system utilizing characters silk screened onto metal pieces in a block chamfer style. Each piece had a crimp in the top of the metal which formed a hook to fit over the existing rails of a message panel. This allowed for a finished sign to be displayed within minutes, and a quick change of information was not very time-consuming. A popular version of these signs provided white letters and numbers on black backgrounds. This was the model for Announcement Board JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. There are two different width blank panels on the broken and solid bars for those who wish to kern the letters tight to form a ribbon, however they were designed to have slight spacing in order to emulate the hand assembly of those vintage sign panels.

The inspiration source for Monarchy Initials is the 1934 Book of American Types by American Type Founders. In that specimen book, they had created a sophisticated two color initial design they called "Stationers Initials" which was only available in metal type at 24, 36, and 48 points. This wonderfully detailed initial style is now digitally recreated and revived for modern use. Monarchy Initials is only capable of initial or single letter monograms due to its unique design. The two color aspect of the original design has been preserved and made accessible within all programs. The Capital character slots contain the background color glyphs, and the lowercase slots hold the outline art for the letters. You can choose a color, type a capital letter, then switch to black and type a lowercase letter for the two color effect, or just tpe a lowercase letter on its own. It's that easy! Download and view the Monarchy Initials Guidebook if you would like to learn a little more.

When ITC Officina was first released in 1990, as a paired family of serif and sans serif faces in two weights with italics, it was intended as a workhorse typeface for business correspondence. But the typeface proved popular in many more areas than correspondence. Erik Spiekermann, ITC Officina's designer: Once ITC Officina got picked up by the trendsetters to denote 'coolness,' it had lost its innocence. No pretending anymore that it only needed two weights for office correspondence. As a face used in magazines and advertising, it needed proper headline weights and one more weight in between the original Book and Bold." To add the new weights and small caps, Spiekermann collaborated with Ole Schaefer, director of typography and type design at MetaDesign. The extended ITC Officina family now includes Medium, Extra Bold, and Black weights with matching italics-all in both Sans and Serif -- as well as new small caps fonts for the original Book and Bold weights."

Do we have a volunteer from the audience! Yes, you young lady, step into the ring, there's no need to be afraid! What's your name? Hypnotique? How appropriate! Now, don't turn away, look into my eyes, look into my eyes, the eyes, the eyes, not around the eyes, don't look around my eyes, look into my eyes, aaaannnndd you're under. And on the menu of mesmerism tonight is a waking dream of letterforms that will keep you on the threshold of consciousness and yet illuminate your every hypnagogic hallucination! Now that we have your focused attention and reduced your peripheral awareness you have an enhanced capacity for response to the suggestion that you should not only purchase this font, but our entire library of fonts. On the count of three you will wake up and you will think of nothing else but acquiring all the tools all good graphic designers should have in their font library. And all we had to do was snap our fingers.

ITC New Winchester is a revival of a typeface that never really had a first release. The original Winchester was an experimental design created by the American type designer W.A. Dwiggins in 1944. Dwiggins was interested in improving the legibility of the English language by reducing the number of ascenders and descenders; to do this, he gave Winchester very short descenders and created uncial forms for a number of letters. The result was a distinctive text typeface that was occasionally used by Dwiggins and Dorothy Abbe in handset form. Fifty years later, Indiana type designer Jim Spiece has turned Dwiggins's experiment into a new family of digital text types. Spiece gave New Winchester a bold weight, as well as small caps (both roman and italic) and old style figures; he also created two forms of the lowercase f, one with and one without an overhang (in metal type, a kern), and a full set of f-ligatures.

There's nothing really disastrous (impending or not) going on in my life right now, but I have always liked the expression. I thought about it when I watched a news item about the recent storm we had in Europe. The news showed footage of a person narrowly escaping a huge falling tree. Impending Disaster font is certainly no disaster. I created it using my fantastic Chinese ink and a broken tapas skewer (I seemed to have run out of my regular satay skewers). The result is a slightly rough, comic book kinda font. It comes with two sets of alternates for the lower case letters (which cycle as you type), one set of stylistic alternates for the 'O' glyph (and all accented O's), an alternate ampersand, asterisk, question mark and exclamation mark and a set of alternate numerals. Impending Disaster comes with extensive language support, including Vietnamese, Greek and Sami - so don't come running and say you didn't have any options! ;-)

Houschka Alt Pro is a carbon copy of the Houschka Pro family with one key difference: the rounded signature glyphs A & W on the default positions swap places with their straight alternates. Houschka was named after Georg Houschka, a sadly defunct confectioner’s shop in Salzburg, Austria, which had a wonderful 1930s frontage and distinctively rounded letterforms in the sign above the door. Houschka Pro is the follow up to the original Houschka type family which first appeared back in 1999. Character shapes have been improved, kerning and spacing refined, and OpenType features include CE, Baltic, Turkish & Cyrillic language support plus small caps, 3 stylistic sets, contextual alternates, ligatures and 4 sets of numerals. Houschka is a clean and legible modern sans serif typeface which shares the humanist qualities of Gill Sans and Johnston but retains a uniquely charming character of its own (particularly in signature glyphs A, G, Q, W, u & w). The monolinear structure, rounded corners and rolling curves give Houschka a soft and friendly appearance.

Woodford Bourne is a brand new 19th century grotesque typeface. The design is a tribute to the historic stone cast type in the building façades of the former Woodford, Bourne & Co. in Cork City, Ireland. For many years I had admired the type’s simplicity and strength, so I decided to faithfully reproduce those letters and expand them to a fully working font with 500 glyphs per case. A key feature of Woodford Bourne is the ability to change the feel of your typography with just one click. Switch from contemporary to vintage style by selecting “Stylistic Set 1” – this gives Woodford Bourne a unique versatility which I am sure you will enjoy playing with in your designs. It is a solid, reliable “workhorse” font family that reproduces well at all sizes… it’s also great for branding and identities. These font files (v2) were redrawn and updated in April 2021 (v1 created 2015).

ITC Hedera's roots can be traced to a suite of initials intended for book design. Olivera Stojadinovic, the face's designer, made the first sketches for the initials with a handmade tool consisting of two flexible metal strips tied to a wooden handle. This makeshift pen created the distinctive uneven double strokes of the letterforms. Stojadinovic says that she tried to keep the original flavor of the sketches in the finished font. Stroke roughness has been preserved in final execution, though the characters had some cleaning and polishing," she notes. Based on Renaissance letterforms, ITC Hedera has a classical quality that complements its calligraphic exuberance. The name Hedera? According to Stojadinovic, "It's the name of a common ivy. I chose it because of the organic image of the character strokes, which, to me, resemble shapes from nature's leaves or stems of plants." Rough-hewn yet elegant, ITC Hedera is an exceptional display design."

I have just returned from a trip to Malaysia, Java and Bali with my family: my wife had some family business there, so we turned it into a holiday. The last time I visited these places was 26 years ago and I knew things would have changed, but I wasn’t prepared for the ugly truth. Malaysia’s interior has been converted into one big oil palm plantation, Java is choked in plastic and Bali is one endless string of concrete hotels, restaurants and cheap tattoo parlours. Plastic Fantastic is not an ode to the many uses of plastic. It is a wake up call: we really need to stop using disposable plastic! You can start by implementing the Plastic Fantastic font family in your durable water bottle designs, the compostable bag holding your organic potato crisps or that big ole sign advertising your local food truck event. Or whatever it is you want to create. ;-)

With reference to the Type Heritage Project, this font (designer unknown) was cut by Henry Brehmer of New York for the Dickinson Type Foundary of Boston in c1879 and had the original trade name of Renaissant. John F. Cumming later cut a light-face derivative called “Artistic.” A history of the un-patented face can be found at the Type Heritage Project website. Ressonant has a full character set as well as ligatures, superiors, inferiors, numerators, denominators, old style figures, and auto-fractions. There are also alternate caps for N and M as in the original, and, unlike the original, comes in four weights. This font is a documented revival of a 19th-century typeface. The year, country, designer and/or foundry of origin will be published in a series of textbooks entitled “The Type Heritage Project.” Volume I explores quintessential Victorian faces, a spectacular trove of innovative gems; you can see samples by clicking the Type Heritage Project link above.

The inspiration source for Memoriam Initials is the 1934 Book of American Types by American Type Founders. In that specimen book, they had created a sophisticated two color initial design they called “University Initials” which was only available in metal type at 24, 36, and 48 points. This wonderfully detailed initial style is now digitally recreated and revived for modern use. Memoriam Initials is only capable of initial or single letter monograms due to its unique design. The two color aspect of the original design has been preserved and made accessible within all programs. The Capital character slots contain the background color glyphs, and the lowercase slots hold the outline art for the letters. You can choose a color, type a capital letter, then switch to black and type a lowercase letter for the two color effect, or just type a lowercase letter on its own. It’s that easy! Download and view the Memoriam Initials Guidebook if you would like to learn a little more.