Smart Sans is a personal tribute to Leslie (Sam) Smart, the first type director to be hired by a major typesetting house in Canada. Smart was a twentieth century design pioneer who raised the standards of Canadian typography. Together with three of his peers, he established the first Type Directors Club in Toronto. After Smart's death in 1998, type designer Rod McDonald decided that something should be done to commemorate Smart's life and achievements. I had first thought of establishing a scholarship in Sam's name, but a typeface design soon replaced this idea," says McDonald. "Once I decided to design a typeface, however, it became a foregone conclusion that it would be a sans serif - for no other reason than that I loved the name Smart Sans." Two typefaces served as inspiration for McDonald's work. "Like thousands of designers, I'm keen on Matthew Carter's Helvetica Compressed series. And, when I was younger, I also loved Fred Lambert's Compacta," says McDonald. "I thought there might be a place for a small range that could take over from these 'old workhorses' and, in the process, bring a fresher look to the genre." McDonald drew three weights for the Smart Sans family, all ideally suited for setting attention-getting headlines and powerful display copy. The two-storied 'g' contributes to the design's lively personality, and the short 'r' helps maintain tight, even spacing. Smart Sans is the perfect homage to a great typographer, because it raises the bar on what to expect from condensed sans serif typefaces. Sam Smart would be pleased."

An authentic script from the tip of the ball point pen. This hasn’t been seen yet: A typeface which truly looks as if it were handwritten. Calligraphy is, actually, the art of fine writing. And actually, written scripts as typeface for the computer are 100% nonsense. And yet, an obvious thought: Create a typeface which truly derives from everyday handwriting. And since we, if we write at all, utilize practically only a ball point pen anymore, then a modern cursive writing form must look like just that. As a counterpart to the artistic ”handwritings“ which have long been available as typeface, the thought of digitalizing a truly ”ugly“ handwriting is appealing. After all, time and again there is the need for a text to look ”handwritten“. Biró Script is written freehand with a ball point pen. Finally a truly individual script! Biró Script includes more than 300 authentic ligatures in addition to the customary alphabet. By the way, the most convincing effect is obtained with a font size of about 18 to 22 points, at which the thickness of the stroke is now about the same as that of a real ball point pen. There's a difference between the anglo-american forms of some characters (esp. the numerals 1 and 7, but also capitals I and F) and how it's written in the rest of the world. For those of us who aren’t used to the world-wide usual forms, Biró Script includes a US version with the appropriate characters.

Iconic Conjuring memories of chunky typefaces from the late-60s and early-70s, and named after the world’s greatest footballer of that and probably any other era, FS Pele is one of a set of Fontsmith fonts designed specifically for headlines and other prominent applications. “We wanted to create fonts that could be integral to the design of posters, album covers and magazines,” says Jason Smith. Welcome to FS Pele, iconic, like its namesake (though, perhaps, a little less nimble). Big Pele, little Pele There was only one Pele. But there are two sizes of FS Pele. FS Pele One, with the finer counters and details, adds considerable weight and style at large sizes, especially in big block headlines on posters. FS Pele Two’s thicker “slots” make it a better choice for smaller-sized text. A load of blocks FS Pele began as an exercise by Phil Garnham in turning squares into legible letters, via the least means necessary. The idea extended his ideas about logo-making, and the search for a stamp-like brand mark that lends authority, stability and instant identification. “The thought that the type was a 2D/3D jigsaw of slotted, architectural pieces was almost an after-thought. I wanted to create a strong, stacking, block aesthetic for the most contemporary poster design. “At the time there were a lot of designers creating their own versions of the same thing but I wanted to take the blocker forms to the next step, and infer a more legible text without sacrificing the idea.”

Iconic Conjuring memories of chunky typefaces from the late-60s and early-70s, and named after the world’s greatest footballer of that and probably any other era, FS Pele is one of a set of Fontsmith fonts designed specifically for headlines and other prominent applications. “We wanted to create fonts that could be integral to the design of posters, album covers and magazines,” says Jason Smith. Welcome to FS Pele, iconic, like its namesake (though, perhaps, a little less nimble). Big Pele, little Pele There was only one Pele. But there are two sizes of FS Pele. FS Pele One, with the finer counters and details, adds considerable weight and style at large sizes, especially in big block headlines on posters. FS Pele Two’s thicker “slots” make it a better choice for smaller-sized text. A load of blocks FS Pele began as an exercise by Phil Garnham in turning squares into legible letters, via the least means necessary. The idea extended his ideas about logo-making, and the search for a stamp-like brand mark that lends authority, stability and instant identification. “The thought that the type was a 2D/3D jigsaw of slotted, architectural pieces was almost an after-thought. I wanted to create a strong, stacking, block aesthetic for the most contemporary poster design. “At the time there were a lot of designers creating their own versions of the same thing but I wanted to take the blocker forms to the next step, and infer a more legible text without sacrificing the idea.”

The Lamia font is inspired by the work of the most famous calligrapher of the Basque Country, Jose Francisco de Iturzaeta Eizaguirre (Getaria1788-Madrid 1853). His writing method was compulsory in Spanish schools since 1835. His "unpolished Spanish font" tried to be more effective than the more commercial English version by avoiding embellishments and excessive rear tearing. More akin with the liberal values imported by the French, his offerings sought uniformity, speed and efficiency to ensure that those in the less-favored echelons of society had an effective communication tool. From his "general collection of characters of European Letters" published in Madrid in 1833, we have chosen the "lower case pancilla reformed" represented in one of the prints. We have tried to reinterpret it by keeping its essence but also ensuring that it is viable for potential contemporary uses which, thanks to its good readability and effectiveness in longer texts, basically means as a decorative or display font. The upper case was generated using the lower case as a reference.

To describe what inspired Magneta would be to add a little Dwiggins, throw in some Benton with a hint of Austin, wrap it up in a crisp, contemporary package and serve. The skeleton of the family is a Garalde (like my earlier Epic) but with a desire to produce something much more transitional and contemporary, I sought to simplify, simplify, simplify. Cap and ascenders share the same height, the x-height is slightly larger than expected which should make a functional typeface for editorial, headlines or where more visually complex systems are needed. The modulation is much more intentional than historical and creates some interesting interactions between the various weights. There are both Normal and Condensed widths available with 6 different weights and matching italics, small caps, oldstyle figures, swashes, stylistic and discretionary ligatures (that includes some fun majuscule ligatures in the roman styles), there is no lack of typographic goodness for the designer. To add some spice, a set of Decorative Ornaments have been created that include geometric, floral, curvilinear patterns and much more.

Philip Bouwsma's Symposium Pro is a wide Carolingian script that can be set simply or with a wide range of flourishes. It takes its inspiration from the scriptoria of the twelfth century, particularly in Spain, where Christians, Muslims and Jews lived harmoniously in a brilliant culture for two centuries. As manuscripts were translated and copied to meet the Western demand for classical texts, calligraphic elements from Arabic and Hebrew spread throughout Europe, sparking a proliferation of new styles that brought the simple book hand to a higher level. Symposium Pro spans a broad range of time and space, from the court of Charlemagne to the Arabian nights and Renaissance Florence. Symposium Pro comes in four weights, ranging from Light to Bold, with each font containing over 1200 glyphs. Variations on every letter form, from swashes to subtle alterations, are plenty, with some even having up to 40 alternates. Also plenty are the embedded ornaments and flourishes, over a hundred of them. Keep that glyph palette handy for many pleasant surprises and easy setting solutions.

A fairy tale, is a folklore genre that takes the form of a short story. Story tale, is a new type family for wonderous, romantic, magical and playful narratives brought to you by Resitenza. The 1970s were wild and whimsical times. Book covers from this time were iconic, innovative and enduring; bold colour and stylised pattern dominated. Story Tales forms were inspired by 70s books covers, and aims to encapsulate the zeitgeist of the time, but the typeface is by no means constrained to revivals of this era. There are nods to 60's flower power & psychedelia, chromatic type and decorative queues from the 1800s and the spirit of post-war era children's almanacks. It is also perfectly suited to inspiring curiosity, imagination and fantasy in today's audiences. Each of Story Tales 8 styles (4 upright and 4 italics) stack on top of one another giving the designer broad aesthetic range. This layering of styles and the ornamental illumination allows striking multi-coloured typography for your book covers, editorial and poster designs.

To describe what inspired Magneta would be to add a little Dwiggins, throw in some Benton with a hint of Austin, wrap it up in a crisp, contemporary package and serve. The skeleton of the family is a Garalde (like my earlier Epic) but with a desire to produce something much more transitional and contemporary, I sought to simplify, simplify, simplify. Cap and ascenders share the same height, the x-height is slightly larger than expected which should make a functional typeface for editorial, headlines or where more visually complex systems are needed. The modulation is much more intentional than historical and creates some interesting interactions between the various weights. There are both Normal and Condensed widths available with 6 different weights and matching italics, small caps, oldstyle figures, swashes, stylistic and discretionary ligatures (that includes some fun majuscule ligatures in the roman styles), there is no lack of typographic goodness for the designer. To add some spice, a set of Decorative Ornaments have been created that include geometric, floral, curvilinear patterns and much more.

The BATTISTA typeface stands in the long tradition of the designs developed by Giambattista Bodoni, who made his famous typefaces in the end of the eighteenth century. Similar designs can be found on various specimen books e.g. Alexander Wilson, John Bell, Edmund Fry and Alexander Thibaudeau. One of the best italics was available by Stephenson Blake & Co. foundry form Sheffield, England. In the end of the nineteenth century an unknown punch cutter at the German type foundry Schelter & Giesecke made an very bold cut of this Bodoni design. He brought both designs, the regular and the italic to an new level of harmony. Compared to the original Bodoni designs the new typeface was a lot bolder, which was well taken by the audience in this time. The BATTISTA typeface is an remarkable design, assembled of ultra bold and very fine shapes, but in all, the spirit of Bodonis design was well preserved. BATTISTA is a classic display design. The fine details are best shown on larger text sizes.

HD Anomie is a modern geometric sans built in 18 styles with variable support and is brought to you by HyperDeluxe®. Its subtle forms and nuanced curves create a simple structure that could be perceived as mundane, but our goal was to create a typeface that is both mechanical and organic in its forms so it seamlessly fits within the environment it is placed. It's clean, minimal approach gives it a wide array of offline uses such as branding, editorial & print, but its modern design and detailed build makes it perfect for UI & digital applications. The clean visual structure of the letter forms give it great readability at smaller sizes, while also being happy to be shown off at larger sizes. Built to be robust and as versatile as possible we have around 1150 Glyphs per weight including extended Latin & Cyrillic support as well as basic Greek. Anomie also features extras such as 2 arrow sets, circled numbers as well as stylistic alternates and case sensitive forms. Find beauty in the Mundane. Meet HD Anomie.

Ansage does not claim to be neutral; it escapes from the rationalist sans of closed strokes and regular forms. Meaning Announcement in German, Ansage is versatile and communicates effectively across a broad range of media and formats such as branding, posters, websites, apps, titles and compositions with little spacing). Ansage is a sans serif font with a strong personality that emerges from an interest in and the study of a wide variety of typographic specimens of Gothic fonts from the nineteenth century. The design process behind Ansage brought about constant transformations in form; the result is a compact and robust font, with a large x-height, small ascenders and descenders, and open terminals that grow in expressiveness as it increases in weight. It is available in 10 weights, ranging from Hairline to Black, and 3 widths – Condensed, Regular and Expanded – plus italics, which make a total of 60 perfect variables to combine and contrast with each other. In addition, it also includes multiple open-type functions such as alternative styles, Old Style Figures, Tabular Forms, fractions, case sensitive, ligatures and more.

Our Bazaruto family was inspired by an old fashioned specimen from “Letters and Lettering” by Carlyle & Oring, but you'll find the inspiration has been greatly expounded upon. What began as an all Capitals specimen has been fleshed out to an extended full character set with many features and variants from the original design. Bazaruto has been an exercise in typographic evolution. The original Art Deco style spawned an Engraved version, then a Bodoni-esque text style, and then a monoline version of that text style (both of the latter complete with Obliques). But after that is when the real interpretations of form began with the development of the Iron fonts, playing off the original specimen having a visual flavor of wrought ironwork in them, and blending that into the Bodoni-esque typestyles. Lastly, a fast and loose hand drawn version of the Iron fonts and an ornaments font were created to add more variety and spunk to the family. The Bazaruto family is a visual grab bag of styles which all have an underlying harmony.

Once upon a midnight dreary, this Comicraftsman pondered, weak and weary, For a name synonymous with Mighty and Marvelous comics lore. Solid, Outline, Inline was the nameless font I'd crafted, I nodded, nearly napping o'er the work I'd grafted When suddenly came a tapping, As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my cubicle door. "'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my cubicle door-- Calling out "EXCELSIOR!" Then an Amazing Vision beguiled my sad fancy into smilin', By the Spectacular decorum of the countenance it wore, "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven," he said, "thou art sure no craven, And thy font should not remain nameless here forevermore!" Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow From comic books surcease of sorrow, letters that called out "EXCELSIOR!" Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking of the nominative neuter singular thing Like Some Silvered Surfer wandering from the Nightly shore-- The Vision shrieked, upstarting--"Tell me what thy lordly name is thus!" Quoth the Craftsman: "EXCELSIUS!"

Nyxali exudes an industrial ruggedness, a typeface that is not content to be relegated to the background. No, Nyxali demands attention, with its rusted metal stamping style that creates an impression of hard work and gritty determination. This typeface’s design is inspired by a misaligned mechanism that is not afraid to show its imperfections. The result speaks to the rough-and-tumble nature of life and the willingness to get one’s hands dirty to get the job done. Nyxali’s alphabet is not content to be perfect; instead, it embraces the irregularity that comes with the cryptic stamping process. But make no mistake, while Nyxali may be rough around the edges, it is not without refinement. The letter pair ligatures are a testament to this, breaking up the monotony of plain, repeating characters and adding a touch of sophistication to an otherwise brutal design. With Nyxali, you can infuse your message with an element of cryptic allure, drawing in your audience with its mysterious and edgy charm. So, if you’re looking for a font that is bold, rugged, and industrial, look no further than Nyxali. It’s the perfect choice for designers who want to inject some personality into their designs and give their message an authentic, industrial edge. Most Latin-based European writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aromanian, Aymara, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kurdish (Latin), Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Moldovan, Montenegrin, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Ossetian (Latin), Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Sami, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wolof, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec Zulu and Zuni.

Guided tour available here. Port Vintage is a new typeface expanded upon the original Port typeface, released in 2013, and being an experimental Didone typeface with a modern twist, inspired by the well known forms of typography masters such as Bodoni and Didot and the exuberance and elegance of calligraphy typefaces. A lot of changes were made, the whole typeface is now softer and has less rough edges, the time it took to mature made it possible to achieve an entirelly new and distinct flavour from the original Port, giving away the rough edges from Port and giving place to the soft transitions and curved connections between the stems and serifs of Port Vintage. Port Vintage melts the straight lines and strong contrasts of the Didone typefaces with the elegant lines of calligraphy in a geometric way, resulting in exuberant characters with geometric swashes that can be combined in countless ways. The result of this experiment is Port Vintage, an unique and rich display typeface meant to be used on big sizes and it’s main perk is the amount of alternative characters it features. Port Vintage is Open-Type programmed and includes hundreds of alternates, from swashes to titling alternates, ligatures and stylistic sets with each character having a thin version of itself, giving complete freedom to all your creative needs. Port Vintage is available in 10 different styles: Port Vintage Regular, being the base version and featuring the whole base character set; Port Vintage Regular Decorated, featuring richer forms and containing more ornamentated and more extravagant characters; Port Vintage Medium and Port Vintage Medium Decorated, designed for the occasions you need a bit more thickness and the decoration variants: Port Vintage Ornaments, containing a wide set of elements meant for the creation of fillets, vignettes and fleurons, resulting in an almost infinite number of possible combinations to embellish your designs and Port Vintage Words, a set of some of the most common words used in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese. All styles, except Port Vintage Ornaments and Port Vintage Words, include italic styles. For a better understanding of all the uses of Port Vintage and the full character list the reading of the manual is recommended.