Sovba is an amiable rounded sans-serif inspired by handwriting. Sovba is useful for a look that is uniquely casual, fresh and smooth. Sovba simplifies character forms down to their basic characteristics, and has a strong, silky smooth forward motion. Sovba includes more traditional optional alternates for a number of characters, including the ëEí and ëF,í OpenType alternate characters, old style figures and small caps. Sovba is a fine choice when you require a versatile upright oblique for logotypes, headlines or short blocks of text.

Pure and not-so-simple Maybe it’s the air of purity, openness and transparency that they transmit, but geometric typefaces are more popular than ever among leading brands. Based on near-perfect circles, triangles and squares, geometric letterforms look uncomplicated, even though making them readable is anything but – something the designers of the first wave of geometric fonts discovered nearly a century ago. Many of the world’s most recognisable brands in technology, retail, travel, food, manufacturing and other industries continue to be drawn to the straightforward, honest character that geometric fonts convey. Fontsmith set out in 2015 to develop a typeface in the same tradition, but optimised for the demands of modern brands – online and offline usage, readability and accessibility. And, of course, with the all-important Fontsmith x-factor built in. FS Lucas is the bold and deceptively simple result. Handle with care The letterforms of FS Lucas are round and generous, along the lines of Trajan Column lettering stripped of its serifs. But beware their thorns. Their designer, Stuart de Rozario, who also crafted the award-winning FS Millbank, wanted a contrast between spiky and soft, giving sharp apexes to the more angular letterforms, such as A, M, N, v, w and z. Among his inspirations were the colourful, geometric compositions of Frank Stella, the 1920s art deco poster designs of AM Cassandre, and the triangular cosmic element symbol, which led him to tackle the capital A first, instead of the usual H. The proportions and angles of the triangular form would set the template for many of the other characters. It was this form, and the light-scattering effects of triangular prisms, that lit the path to a name for the typeface: Lucas is derived from lux, the Latin word for light. Recommended reading Early geometric typefaces were accused of putting mathematical integrity before readability. FS Lucas achieves the trick of appearing geometric, while taking the edge off elements that make reading difficult. Perfectly circlular shapes don’t read well. The way around that is to slightly thicken the vertical strokes, and pull out the curves at the corners to compensate; the O and o of FS Lucas are optical illusions. Pointed apexes aren’t as sharp as they look; the flattened tips are an essential design feature. And distinctive details such as the open terminals of the c, e, f, g, j, r and s, and the x-height bar on the i and j, aid legibility, especially on-screen. These and many other features, the product of sketching the letterforms in the first instance by hand rather than mapping them out mechanically by computer, give FS Lucas the built-in humanity and character that make it a better, easier read all-round. Marks of distinction Unlike some of its more buttoned-up geometric bedfellows, FS Lucas can’t contain its natural personality and quirks: the flick of the foot of the l, for example, and the flattish tail on the g and j. The unusual bar on the J improves character recognition, and the G is circular, without a straight stem. There’s a touch of Fontsmith about the t, too, with the curve across the left cross section in the lighter weights, and the ampersand is one of a kind. There’s a lot to like about Lucas. With its 9 weights, perfect proportions and soft but spiky take on the classic geometric font, it’s a typeface that could light up any brand.

Pure and not-so-simple Maybe it’s the air of purity, openness and transparency that they transmit, but geometric typefaces are more popular than ever among leading brands. Based on near-perfect circles, triangles and squares, geometric letterforms look uncomplicated, even though making them readable is anything but – something the designers of the first wave of geometric fonts discovered nearly a century ago. Many of the world’s most recognisable brands in technology, retail, travel, food, manufacturing and other industries continue to be drawn to the straightforward, honest character that geometric fonts convey. Fontsmith set out in 2015 to develop a typeface in the same tradition, but optimised for the demands of modern brands – online and offline usage, readability and accessibility. And, of course, with the all-important Fontsmith x-factor built in. FS Lucas is the bold and deceptively simple result. Handle with care The letterforms of FS Lucas are round and generous, along the lines of Trajan Column lettering stripped of its serifs. But beware their thorns. Their designer, Stuart de Rozario, who also crafted the award-winning FS Millbank, wanted a contrast between spiky and soft, giving sharp apexes to the more angular letterforms, such as A, M, N, v, w and z. Among his inspirations were the colourful, geometric compositions of Frank Stella, the 1920s art deco poster designs of AM Cassandre, and the triangular cosmic element symbol, which led him to tackle the capital A first, instead of the usual H. The proportions and angles of the triangular form would set the template for many of the other characters. It was this form, and the light-scattering effects of triangular prisms, that lit the path to a name for the typeface: Lucas is derived from lux, the Latin word for light. Recommended reading Early geometric typefaces were accused of putting mathematical integrity before readability. FS Lucas achieves the trick of appearing geometric, while taking the edge off elements that make reading difficult. Perfectly circlular shapes don’t read well. The way around that is to slightly thicken the vertical strokes, and pull out the curves at the corners to compensate; the O and o of FS Lucas are optical illusions. Pointed apexes aren’t as sharp as they look; the flattened tips are an essential design feature. And distinctive details such as the open terminals of the c, e, f, g, j, r and s, and the x-height bar on the i and j, aid legibility, especially on-screen. These and many other features, the product of sketching the letterforms in the first instance by hand rather than mapping them out mechanically by computer, give FS Lucas the built-in humanity and character that make it a better, easier read all-round. Marks of distinction Unlike some of its more buttoned-up geometric bedfellows, FS Lucas can’t contain its natural personality and quirks: the flick of the foot of the l, for example, and the flattish tail on the g and j. The unusual bar on the J improves character recognition, and the G is circular, without a straight stem. There’s a touch of Fontsmith about the t, too, with the curve across the left cross section in the lighter weights, and the ampersand is one of a kind. There’s a lot to like about Lucas. With its 9 weights, perfect proportions and soft but spiky take on the classic geometric font, it’s a typeface that could light up any brand.

Do you sometimes have an appetite for a bit more wholesome typography? Do you find the ubiquitous sans serifs too industrial and bland in taste? Opt for something more organic: Wonder – a rootsy yet contemporary type family. With a deliciously juicy approach to serifs and a chunky texture, Wonder is a real treat among typefaces. Despite its rustic flair, Wonder is perfectly adaptable for contemporary contexts from branding to packaging, mobile apps and beyond. Savvy features such as multiple numeral styles (old style figures, tabular figures, subscript and superscript numerals), small capitals and swashes are included in all Wonder fonts. Enjoy!

Peter Schmidt, well-known designer from Hamburg, browsed in a fashion magazine on a return flight from the United States. At that time he was thinking about a logo for a philharmonic orchestra. In the magazine, he noticed some interesting typography. He removed the page from the magazine and sent it later to Peter Langpeter. That was the inspiration for the creation of the logo. Since Peter Langpeter really liked the classic aesthetics of the resulting letters, he developed a whole new alphabet of it. Initially, only capital letters. Now he has completed this exceptionally beautiful font.

True North is a vintage inspired typeface with 16 styles and a monoline script. True North comes with labels, extras and free banners. Extras include wild animals, catchwords, numbers, symbols, tools, maple leaves and trees. True North is a headline font with alternate capitals. Combine all 16 styles with the script, banners, labels and extras and you get a wonderful vintage design. True North Script is a playful, fully-connected monoline script full of ligatures and alternate forms. Its wide range of international characters and alternate use of the power of OpenType automatically creates the feel of hand-lettering.

Steradian is an exploration of the geometric genre and although it has a geometric base, the widths between letters are not much different across the weights. That is due to the process, in which the proportions of the heavier weights paved the way for the lighter ones. It also has a series of details that make Steradian stand out and gives it a special touch. Some of its main features are the double-story ‘a’, its closed apertures and some of the capitals have a distinct personality (such as the G and Q). Read more about the design process at the Emtype’s Blog.

Linotype Really, designed by Gary Munch, is a typeface family of six weights with italics and small capitals that offers a broad palette of expressions to draw from, sensibly light to brightly stentorian. The moderate-to-strong contrast of the vertical to horizontal strokes recalls the Transitional and Modern styles of Baskerville and Bodoni, and the subtly obliqued axis of the stoke weight recalls the old-style faces of Caslon. A strong belt of sturdy serifs completes the Realist sensibility of a clear, readable, no-nonsense text face whose clean details offer the designer a high-impact display face.

German type designer Jürgen Brinckmann created this script FontFont in 2001. The family contains 2 weights: Regular and Bold and is ideally suited for advertising and packaging, festive occasions, editorial and publishing as well as poster and billboards. FF Ropsen Script provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures, small capitals, alternate characters, and case-sensitive forms. It comes with a complete range of figure set options – oldstyle and lining figures, each in tabular and proportional widths.

Years ago, I came across a vintage playbill and was struck by its lettering. The detailed floral pattern surrounded by thick outlines stayed in my mind even though the play's name and cast have faded. I finally tried to recreate the style from memory and Forgotten Playbill is the result. While all letters are actually capitals, the uppercase rotate slightly counterclockwise and the lowercase slightly clockwise. I suggest alternating between the two to reproduce my mystery inspiration.

Introducing the "Bright Sunshine" script font. New fashionable handwriting font and super cool with sexy style. And also the Capital letters set with contemporary and sophisticated accents. Bright Sunshine offers beautiful typographic harmony for a diversity of design projects, including logos & branding, wedding designs, social media posts, advertisements & product designs. "Bright Sunshine" includes Italics, full set of lovely uppercase and lowercase letters, multilingual symbols, numerals, and punctuation. And this Font has given PUA unicode (specially coded fonts).

This font has been developed based on the engraving by the German artist Daniel Hopfer (1470-1536) listing the Latin ABC. While creating the font I tried to preserve the archaism and certain imperfection characteristic for the prototype to accentuate its charm. Fanciful convolution on the serif make it a bit fairy-tale like and cheerful. The font is also available with decorated dots as in the original version. All the letters in the font are capital.

Canadian type designer Nick Shinn created this display FontFont in 1997. The family contains 3 weights: Regular, Italic, and Bold and is ideally suited for advertising and packaging, festive occasions as well as poster and billboards. FF Merlin provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures, small capitals, titling alternates, alternate characters, and case-sensitive forms. It comes with a complete range of figure set options – oldstyle and lining figures, each in tabular and proportional widths.

Bovid ready to clash Following the ancient Adriatic history and natural shapes of the ram horns, Bovid typeface connects sports and tradition in a fearless and reckless way. It empowers players as soon as they put on their jerseys, making them ready to clash for the highest score. Bovid typeface has low contrast and high legibility with priority on numerals. It has capital letters in two sizes and is suitable for sport jerseys, posters, brochures, flags and tickets.

Redwood is the fresh and lively digitization of the popular ATF landmark, Raleigh Cursive. Drawn by Willard Sniffin in 1929, and introduced by ATF in 1930, this classic script is prominently featured in almost every published type history book, and proudly listed among every letterpress printer's type assets. Redwood's unique calligraphy is complemented with a set of swash capitals unlike any others out there. Strength, grace and elegance rarely ever combine the way they do in this typeface.

Milwaukee, is a geometric typeface with an embellished-like touch. Designed in 2011, in capital English & Greek characters, including numerals, and basic punctuation marks, as well as CE characters. It was initially inspired by Byzantine and Japanese typography and later from the cityscape of Milwaukee, thus its name. This typeface comes in four weights and is suggested for logos, short titles, social media marketing, book covers, posters, labels and more applications you will choose to go with.

French type designer Xavier Dupré created this serif FontFont in 2001. The family contains 3 weights: Regular, Italic, and Bold and is ideally suited for advertising and packaging, book text, film and tv as well as small text. FF Parango provides advanced typographical support with features such as ligatures, small capitals, alternate characters, case-sensitive forms, and stylistic alternates. It comes with a complete range of figure set options – oldstyle and lining figures, each in tabular and proportional widths.

Pushki Pro is based on some hand lettering found on a Russian poster. Pushki Pro works with your OpenType-savvy applications, using contextual alternatives, to alternate between the upper and lowercase letters preventing adjacent glyphs from repeating.

Floralissimo are flowery embellishments that I found in several old publishing books dating back over a hundred years. I thought they might be useful for some of you, so I digitized them. Your digitizing typedesigner, Gert Wiescher

Same Old English JNL is your basic, everyday Old English text font with one small difference—it more resembles a hand-lettered typeface complete with tiny inconsistencies than it does the "perfect" versions found in printer's type.

Roman Stencil JNL is a condensed version of the classic Roman typeface found on many vintage hand-punched brass stencils made for packing and shipping merchandise. This digital interpretation is available in both regular and oblique styles.

This typeface is extrapolated from the ‘We the People’ calligraphy of the handwritten US Constitution Preamble which employed a style based on German Text and Square Text exemplars from George Bickham’s penmanship copy-books, the most celebrated being The Universal Penman published in 1743. The original Constitution document was transcribed onto parchment by Jacob Shallus, a Pennsylvania Assistant Clerk, over a weekend in 1787. Shallus’s biographer, Arthur Plotnik (The Man Behind the Quill, 1987), notes that he was paid $30, a modest monthly wage at the time. He also suggests that the calligraphic headings, ‘We the People’ and ‘Article’, may have been inserted by Shallus’s 14 year old trainee son, Francis, “The manner in which the ‘Article’ headings are squeezed into the space Shallus allowed for them suggests a second hand—and perhaps not a very experienced one.” The unconventional backslant of the headings would seem to support this contention, and at the end of the document there is perhaps a novice’s inconsistency in the structure of the letter n between that used for ‘done’ and those used for ‘In Witness’. However, one has to admire the elegant swagger of the wavy t, h and l which the K-Type font extends to the b, f and k. Also, the simpler, Schwabacher-style W, an enlarged version of the lowercase w, is a little less flamboyant than the capital W from the German and Square texts in Bickham’s manuals. For designers using OpenType-aware applications, the typeface includes some Alternates, including a Bickham-style W, the letters t, h and n with added flourishes, two simpler forms of the A, and a few roman numerals for numbering articles. Also some ornamental flourishes and a round middle dot/decimal point. Punctuation marks are drawn in square, calligraphic style, but an alternative round period/full stop, for use with currency and numerals, is available at the period centered position (though placed on the baseline), accessed by Shift Option 9 on a Mac, or Alt 0183 on Windows. The full phrase, ‘We the People’, has been placed at the trademark keystroke and can be accessed by Option 2 (or Shift Option 2) on a Mac, or Alt 0153 on Windows. For designers who find the backslant awkward or unpleasant, the licensed typeface also includes two additional fonts which have a vertical aspect that may be more conducive to graphic design layouts. ‘We The People Upright’ and ‘We The People Upright Bold’ both retain the distinctive style, and the heavier weight is only slightly emboldened, just enough to add some punch.

This font was inspired by lettering found on an old newsprint periodical from the 19th century.

Menca takes cues from the lettering of engineering, found on road signage and industrial metal plaques.

This font was inspired by lettering found on an old soap box from the 19th century.

Mr Chalk has a simple goal: being Mr Chalk. This font sets out to occupy a form indistinguishable from the real thing, and comes as close as ink will get. Looking at this font you can hear the scrabble of writing on a chalkboard, though the character is more of a mischievous child than a strict teacher. Round and free, Mr Chalk is a light and fluffy font ideal for an impersonal and friendly tone. If you're looking for another Chalk based font check out Lippy, a typeface for both lipstick and chalk based finishes!

Stockville JNL is a total rebuild of the wood type design originally found in Arvada JNL. All angular lines were straightened to give the lettering a more classic look. Bold, brash and block style, this headline typeface is available in both regular and oblique styles.

Inspired by the Techno sound of the 1990s, Alexander Branczyk designed a series of new, wild and controversial fonts which mark a complete departure from typographic traditions. MadZine font is part of the Face2Face package, together with 7 other fonts from young and unconventional designers.

Driade is a font family based on personal calligraphic expression. It is exotic but still familiar, readable and graced with a human touch. The “Aged” style features irregularities found in Kothay’s original brush drawings. While the “Lined” pares the letterforms down to their basic forms.

Grosvenor is part of the Staunton Script Family of fonts designed by Ted Staunton for his historic novel centered around a family bible and the handwritten annotation through seven generations. The Grosvenor font is a loose script based on copperplate writing circa late 1800s.

Sportsboard JNL is a serif font alternate to the popular Flipboard JNL, which emulates the electronic flip-character message boards found at airports, sporting venues and used for election tallies. The type design used for this version of a flipboard display is Sports Jock JNL.

Based loosely on a square, this hair line design works best at 24pt and above. Due to the modular nature of this design there may be a slight lack of smoothness to the curves at very large point sizes (around 100 pt and above).

Plz Script is a warm and friendly script font that can be used as body copy or for headlines. Great with Architectural Lettering or Plz Print. It can also be found in the book "Indie Fonts 3, a Compendium of Digital Type from Independent Foundries".

After doing this for so many years, one would think my fascination with the old history of writing would have mellowed out by now. The truth is that alongside being a calligraphy history buff, I'm a pop technology freak. Maybe even keener on the tech thing, since I just can't seem to get enough new gadgets. And after working with type technologies for so many years, I'm starting to think that writing and design technologies as we now know them, being about 2.5 post-computer generations, keep becoming more and more detached from what the very old humanity arts/tasks they essentially want to facilitate. In a world where command-z is a frequently used key combination, it’s difficult to justify expecting a Morris-made book or a Zaner-drawn sentence, but accidental artistic “mutations” become welcome, marketable features. When fluid pens were introduced, their liquid saturation influenced type design to a great extent almost overnight an influence professional designers tend to play down. Now round stroke endings are a common sight, and the saturation is so clean and measured, unlike any liquid-paper relationship possible in reality. Some designers even illustrate their work by overlaying perfect circles at stroke ends, in order to illustrate how “geometric” their work was. Because if it’s measured with precise geometry, it’s got to be meaningful design. And once in a while, by a total freak accident, the now-cherished mutations prove to have existed long before the technology that caused them. Rolling Pen was cued by just such a thing: A rounded, circular, roll-flowing calligraphy from the late nineteenth century seemingly one of those experimental takes on what inspired Business Penmanship, another font of mine. Looking at it now it certainly seems to be friendlier, more legible, and maybe even more practical and easier to execute than the standard business penmanship of those days, but I guess friendliness and simplicity were at odds with the stiff manner business liked to present itself back then, so that kind of thing remained buried in the professional penman’s oddities drawer. It would be quite a few years before all this curviness and rounding were thought of as symbolic of graceful movement, which brought such a flow closer to the idea of fine art. Even though in this case the accidental mutation just happens to not be a mutation after all, the whole technology-transforms-application argument still applies here. I'm almost sure “business” will be the last thing on people’s minds when they use this font today. One extreme example of that level of disconnect between origin and current application is shown here, with the so-called business penmanship strutting around in gloss and neon. Rolling Pen is another cup of mine that runneth over with alternates, swashes, ligatures, and other techy perks. To explore its full potential, please use it in a program that supports OpenType features for advanced typography. Enjoy the new Rolling Pen designed by Ale Paul with Neon’s visual poetry by Tomás García.

Distorted fonts are great but are mostly not very practical - 360 is an attempt to create a simple distorted font that can be used far beyond a few logos or headlines. Each 360 character averages roughly half the number of sharp angles of a regular sans serif. This gives it an unusually fresh and timeless appeal and creates a dynamic presence across body text that is very legible and compact without looking overly condensed. 360 was chosen as a name because it can be used as an everyday font, all year round, and because 360 has so many unusual angles that don't conform to normal font conventions. 360 also happens to be a cool number: 360 makes a highly composite number. 360 is also a superior highly composite number and a colossally abundant number. A circle is divided into 360 degrees for the purpose of angular measurement. 360° is also called round angle. 360 is a convenient standard since, 360 being highly composite, it allows a circle to be divided into equal segments with each segment measured in integer degrees rather than fractional degrees. 360 is the sum of a twin prime (179 + 181). A year is roughly calculated as 360 days.