The Ysobel™ typeface family is not only elegant; it is also exceptionally legible and space economical. A collaborative design effort between Robin Nicholas, as lead designer and project director, Delve Withrington and Alice Savoie of Monotype Imaging, the project had the primary design goal of creating a typeface family for setting text in newspapers and periodicals. The result, however, is also ideal for any application that requires quick and easy assimilation of text. According to Nicholas, “The idea for the design started when I was asked to develop a custom version of Century Schoolbook. I wanted to give the design a more contemporary feel, although the client ultimately decided to keep their typeface closer to the original. The project nevertheless gave me ideas for a new design. Since designing Nimrod, some 30 years ago, I had wanted to make a more modern typeface family for newspapers and magazines – this seemed the ideal candidate.” Ysobel (pronounced “Isabel”) has the soft, inviting letter shapes of Century Schoolbook but contrasts these with more incised serifs and terminals. Its capitals are also narrower than those of Century Schoolbook, and care was taken to ensure that they harmonize perfectly with the lowercase. Ysobel’s x-height is full-bodied without disrupting lowercase proportions. In addition, curved terminals, such as those in the “C,” “c” and “e,” were drawn more open as an aid to legibility and readability in text copy. Weight stress is near vertical, and hairlines are robust to ensure character fidelity in small point sizes. Development began with the text version of the family, which has four weights, each with an italic companion. All weights feature lining and old style numerals, fractions, superiors and extended Latin language coverage. Small caps are also available in the Roman Regular design. Ysobel Display is a completely redrawn version of the typeface; it is narrower, and has a slightly smaller x-height, thinner hairlines and subtle design changes to improve its appearance when set at large sizes. The Display Italic received particular attention to make it ideal for setting headlines, subheads and short blocks of copy. Changes include a slightly greater italic angle and more cursive treatment of some letter shapes. Alternative styles of capital “J” and “Q,” to provide variation, are available in all weights.

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.

FF Real is a convincing re-interpretation of the German grotesque style from between 1998 and 1908, but with much more warmth and improved legibility as well as a hint towards the warmer American grotesques. Later on, not just slanted styles, but a “proper” italic version was added inspired by the way Roman and Italic are distinguished in traditional serif faces. NEW: a specially created set of obliques were added in 2018 to give designers more design flexibility, for those looking for a less calligraphic look. In 2020 the family was extended with matching condensed weights. FF Real was originally conceived by Erik Spiekermann as one text weight and one headline weight to be used as the only faces in his biography ‘Hello I am Erik’, edited by Johannes Erler, published in 2014. While Spiekermann drew the alphabets, he passed on the font data to Ralph du Carrois and Anja Meiners who cleaned it up and completed it. In the meantime, FF Real has been extended to a family of two styles and 65 weights each. The design of FF Real is rooted in early static grotesques from the turn of the century. Several German type foundries – among them the Berlin-based foundries Theinhardt and H. Berthold AG – released such designs between 1898 and 1908. The semi-bold weight of a poster-size typeface that was lighter than most of the according semi-bolds in metal type at the time, gave the impetus to FF Real’s regular weight. In the words of Spiekermann, the historical example is “the real, non-fake version, as it were, the royal sans serif face“, thus giving his new typeface the name “Real” (which is also in keeping with his four-letter names, i.e. FF Meta, FF Unit). FF Real is a convincing re-interpretation of the German grotesque style, but with much more warmth and improved legibility. With a hint towards the warmer American grotesques, Spiekermann added those typical Anglo-American features such as a three-story ‘g’ and an ‘8’ with a more defined loop. To better distinguish characters in small text sizes, FF Real Text comes in old style figures, ‘f’ and ‘t’ are wider, the capital ‘I’ is equipped with serifs, as is the lowercase ‘l’. What’s more, i-dots and all punctuation are round.

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.

Actium is a contemporary multilingual sans serif typeface developed to help perfect typography automatically. Type Mafia has focussed on words with odd combinations of capital letters and numbers, such as product names and postal codes such as WD40 and H1N5, jump out of the text. They sit awkwardly together as the numerals have been designed to work with the lowercase, not the uppercase letters – affecting readability.To fix this Type Mafia invented Smart Capo™. Smart Capo™ Smart Capo is a feature that automatically activates once you type an uppercase letter together with a number. When a capital letter is sat next to a numeral, Smart Capo converts the letter to a mid-cap — a contemporary alternative to small caps — and the default old-style numeral to a lining numeral. Actium’s mid-caps and lining numerals have been designed with the same height (between cap and x-height) so they sit comfortably next to each other and fit more harmoniously into text. Smart Capo applies equal attention to capitalised words without any numbers, such as NAVO and USA, and are also automatically set into mid-capitals. Working on its own, Smart Capo saves time and money for the typographer — taking the pain out of text formatting — and makes it a more pleasurable experience for the reader. This feature is made possible by the use of ‘contextual alternates’, an OpenType feature used in modern font software, working with a set of characters specially designed at mid-cap height. By default these changes automatically take place so it doesn't need to be switched on, it will just work. Actium Actium’s design has an unusual diagonal contrast — much more common in a serifed face than in a sans serif — giving it more bite. The typeface looks elegant when set in large sizes and remains very legible when shown in small sizes. The family consists of six weights in two styles, making a dozen fonts. Weights range from light to black in roman and true italic. All fonts are fully loaded with functional elements. Actium boasts an extended Latin character set and with Greek. This means a wide range of Western languages are supported: perfect for use in bilingual publications and packaging. For numerals, each font includes old-style and lining figures in both proportional and tabular widths, with superiors and inferiors. These allow you to select the right set of numbers for the right task.

FF Real is a convincing re-interpretation of the German grotesque style from between 1998 and 1908, but with much more warmth and improved legibility as well as a hint towards the warmer American grotesques. Later on, not just slanted styles, but a “proper” italic version was added inspired by the way Roman and Italic are distinguished in traditional serif faces. NEW: a specially created set of obliques were added in 2018 to give designers more design flexibility, for those looking for a less calligraphic look. In 2020 the family was extended with matching condensed weights. FF Real was originally conceived by Erik Spiekermann as one text weight and one headline weight to be used as the only faces in his biography ‘Hello I am Erik’, edited by Johannes Erler, published in 2014. While Spiekermann drew the alphabets, he passed on the font data to Ralph du Carrois and Anja Meiners who cleaned it up and completed it. In the meantime, FF Real has been extended to a family of two styles and 65 weights each. The design of FF Real is rooted in early static grotesques from the turn of the century. Several German type foundries – among them the Berlin-based foundries Theinhardt and H. Berthold AG – released such designs between 1898 and 1908. The semi-bold weight of a poster-size typeface that was lighter than most of the according semi-bolds in metal type at the time, gave the impetus to FF Real’s regular weight. In the words of Spiekermann, the historical example is “the real, non-fake version, as it were, the royal sans serif face“, thus giving his new typeface the name “Real” (which is also in keeping with his four-letter names, i.e. FF Meta, FF Unit). FF Real is a convincing re-interpretation of the German grotesque style, but with much more warmth and improved legibility. With a hint towards the warmer American grotesques, Spiekermann added those typical Anglo-American features such as a three-story ‘g’ and an ‘8’ with a more defined loop. To better distinguish characters in small text sizes, FF Real Text comes in old style figures, ‘f’ and ‘t’ are wider, the capital ‘I’ is equipped with serifs, as is the lowercase ‘l’. What’s more, i-dots and all punctuation are round.

Morris Sans is a newly revised and extended version of a small geometric family of typefaces originally produced by Morris Fuller Benton in 1930 for ATF. His initial design consisted of an alphabet of squared capital letters with a unique twist that characterized its appearance: corners with rounded exteriors and right-angle interiors. The types were intended for use in the fine print found on business cards, banking or financial forms, and contracts. But over the ensuing decades, this design became a popular element in all sorts of design environments, and several foundries revived the typeface in digital form. Since digital fonts are bicameral, with slots for both upper and lowercase letters, new cuts of the type opted filled the lowercase slots with small caps. In 2006, Linotype commissioned its own version of the typeface-an extension for 21st century use. Under the advisement of Linotype's type director Akira Kobayashi, Dan Reynolds redrew the uppercase and added an original lowercase for the first time. Additionally, a number of extras were brought into the fonts, including six figure styles (tabular and proportional lining figures, tabular and proportional oldstyle figures, and special tabular and proportional small cap" figures). Small caps, which have become an iconic element over time, are accessible in each font as an OpenType feature. To differentiate this version from the original, Linotype's new family is named Morris Sans, in honor of Morris Fuller Benton. All fonts in the Morris Sans family are OpenType Com fonts; they include a character set capable of setting 48 European languages that employ the Roman alphabet, including all Central and Eastern Europe languages, those from the Baltics, and Turkish. This glyph coverage extends to the small caps as well. Morris Sans is a wide typeface, especially in its regular widths; the condensed faces set a more conventional line of text. The new lowercase letters are less geometric than the uppercase, except for those that share the same basic forms (e.g., c, o, and s). Instead of following this geometric trend, the new lowercase tends to strengthen the humanist elements that were present in several characters from the original type, including the uppercase D and the figures 5, 6, and 9. Morris Sans also sports a number of glyphic flares, like the stroke found on the original uppercase Q. Morris Sans is a clean, modern design best suited for headlines, advertising, posters, expressive signage (especially on storefronts), and corporate identity work."

Ashemore developed as a result of my visits to Barcelona, Spain and to Germany, followed soon after by a visit to Asheville, North Carolina. Blending the styles of art and architecture from these three areas may seem initially to result in an unusual formula, but the distinct and flamboyant style of Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts style combined with the more strict rules of a sans serif transfer well into a beautiful and very usable blend of these individually eccentric forms. The resulting font retains the Art Nouveau and Craftsman style flavors, which shine through the typeface despite its geometric base. One of the font’s defining characteristics is the unique terminators of its C, G and S. This face’s texture and rhythm also moves well in longer texts. These and other features give Ashemore a restrained bohemian vibe that seems particularly appropriate for a coffee house or an art gallery. The Ashemore family has a full range of six weights from thin to black and includes condensed and extended options for a total of 36 fonts. The typeface also includes some unique OpenType alternates that make the superfamily even more versatile. Ashemore is equipped for complex professional typography, including alternates, small caps and many alternate characters. The face also has a number of numeral sets, including tabular figures, fractions, old-style, lining figures and superiors and inferiors. OpenType-capable applications such as Quark or the Adobe Suite can take full advantage of automatic ligatures and alternates. You can find these features demonstrated in the .pdf brochure. Ashemore also includes the glyphs to support a wide range of languages, including Central, Eastern and Western European languages. In all, Ashemore supports over 40 languages that use the extended Latin script, making the new addition a great choice for multi-lingual publications and packaging. Ashemore was designed by Jeremy Dooley with production assistance from Lucas Azevedo and Marcelo Magalhaes. Kerning assistance from iKern.