For over 30 years, Tomás Vellvé created beautiful graphics and distinctive typefaces in his native homeland of Spain. First drawn as a phototype display design in 1971, Vellvé’s only typeface in digital form is an uncommon solution to the problem of creating a new sans serif design. The end result, which bears his name, is a design that stands out from the crowd of other sans serif typefaces. The phototype version was only available in a single, light weight. With the release of the digital fonts, however, three additional weights as well as a companion italic for the light weight were created.The typeface designs were originally drawn for Agfa Monotype (now Monotype Imaging) in 1996 as part of the company’s “Creative Alliance” initiative. Through an exclusive licensing arrangement, the Vellvé™ family has now been added to the ITC Typeface Library.ITC Vellvé is a wide design with strong calligraphic overtones. This is no “anonymous” design like so many modern sans. Letters like the `R, `e and `s clearly show the hand of Tomás Vellvé in the design process. Vellvé provides a fresh choice between geometric sans serifs such as Helvetica® and industrial sans serifs like Futura®.

Do you want to present an unforgettable design? We have the right display font for you. This is Kingdom Ink, a display font carefully crafted by our professional designers for the highest quality font. Its bold, prominent characters are perfect to add effects and certain characters to your designs. In addition, the professional, outstanding appearances of this font convey that it will leave amazing impressions to your audience. Some of the letters have swinging end wipes to look visually interesting. On the other hand, its aesthetic, low contrast shapes are inapplicable for small text sizes. Furthermore, you can enjoy the available features here. Features: Stylistic Sets Multilingual Supports PUA Encoded Numerals and Punctuations Kingdom Ink fits best for various design projects, such as brandings, posters, banners, headings, magazine covers, quotes, printed products, merchandise, social media, etc. Find out more ways to use this font by taking a look at the font preview. Thanks for purchasing our fonts. Hopefully, you have a great time using our font. Feel free to contact us anytime for further information or when you have trouble with the font. Thanks a lot and happy designing.

Sweet Blues Monoline Script is a signature font that you can use to make a design for Photography logo, logo branding, poster headline, magazines, advertisements, product designs, wedding invitation, signature or handwritten quote, business cards, fashion, . Sweet Blues Monoline Script font including alternates, 15 ligatures and includes textured swashes. Enable the OpenType Stylistic alternates, you need a program that supports OpenType features such as Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Indesign, Adobe Photoshop, CorelDraw & Microsoft Office. a font that made the hand by having the character up and down like a dancer. Freestyle has a very unique style of signature, it is very suitable for use in the work of modern design. Alternative ending character you can use character + underscore ( a_ ) = ending a with swash to open ligature just tap double character [ l l = ll (ligature)] Features: Basic Latin A -Z and a – z Number International Symbol International glyphs Alternate Ligature Languages supported: Breton, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Estonian,French, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Romanian, Scottish Gaelic, Slovak, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, English, Finnish, Polish, Portuguese, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Welsh. Basically, all european languages that are based on latin alphabet.

If you want your designs to be prominent, you will need a unique, prominent, yet professional, legible font. However, it may be hard and take some time to find the right one due to a lot of options available causing difficulty to figure out the suitable one you desire. With Mirey, you can easily create a unique identity for your design. Mirey is a display serif font in thick weights with small lines on the letters’ edges to look formal and classic. In addition, it expresses unique, artistic touches from its combinations with display font characters. This display font has thick lines and strong contrasts, so that it is perfect to attract attention and to show strong impressions. Due to its high legibility level, this font is applicable for a variety of text sizes. In addition, you can enjoy the available features here. Features: Multilingual Supports PUA Encoded Numerals and Punctuations Mirey fits best for various design projects, such as brandings, posters, banners, headings, magazine covers, quotes, invitations, name cards, printed products, merchandise, social media, etc. Find out more ways to use this font by taking a look at the font preview. Thanks for purchasing our fonts. Hopefully, you have a great time using our font. Feel free to contact us anytime for further information or when you have trouble with the font. Thanks a lot and happy designing.

Continuo is a fascinating, all-uppercase display typeface wherein the contour of each letterform is described with a single, continuous line. The challenges presented by that simple idea are similar to constructing letterforms with neon tubing. For example, when the strokes of a letterform need to be heavier than the width of the neon tube, two tubes are employed to create the outer contours, effectively leaving an unfilled void inside the stroke. Also, since neon tubes cannot be broken apart as they trace the contours, they must follow a path that, for reasons of economy and to avoid optical massing (or bright spots in neon), the tubes are not crossed. So too, the construction of Continuo follows. The newly updated Continuo now has alternate forms of letters A-Z available in the lowercase a-z and by extension those alternates are also present in the lowercase diacritics. The new Latin Plus glyph repertoire of Continuo contains almost 900 glyphs, supporting 224 languages, including Vietnamese and multiple African languages. A handy set of arrows and additional international currency symbols were added as well. The name is derived from the musical term “Basso Continuo” meaning an almost constant bass line, an integral part of most musical melodies. As an in-line display type, Continuo is ideal for headlines and most oversized applications and its unique appearance commands attention from viewers.

Dulcinea is the title of Ramiro Espinoza’s in-depth look at Spanish Baroque calligraphy’s most extreme tendencies, and especially at some of those produced by the writing masters Pedro Díaz Morante and Juan Claudio Aznar de Polanco. These 17th and 18th centuries alphabets with their plentiful calligraphic flourishes represented a marked break with the harmonic and angular Renaissance Cancellaresca style. It was Morante who first introduced and popularized the use of the pointed quill in Spain, and although his famous text entitled “Arte Nueva de escribir” – first volume published in 1616 – contains alphabets that have much in common with traditional broad nib Cancellaresca calligraphy, most of the examples therein are outgrowths of the new models put forward by the Italian master Gianfrancesco Cresci. The writing’s swashes are complex and intricate, but at the same time they feature a profusion of defects. Many of them sometimes come close to ugliness. However, these pages contain an artistic essence that bears a relationship to the ironic and sometimes somber character of Spanish Baroque. That’s why the name of the font pays homage to “Dulcinea del Toboso”, the fictional beauty from Miguel de Cervantes’s ‘Don Quixote’, a work that reveals many of the period’s conflicts, such as the contrast between utopian ideals and reality, uncertainty and madness. But Dulcinea is far from being just a revival. Its forms are not careful tracings of the outlines of Morante and Polanco’s letters, nor are they attempts to reproduce them digitally. In fact, the author of the letters says that had the font been created that way it would have been too archaic to serve as acceptable contemporary typography. However, he believes that there are myriad interesting details that can be rescued and preserved, along with the playful spirit of the original. The work of designing Dulcinea consisted of combining original historical elements with the creativity and calligraphy of the font’s author in order to produce a modern typography that isn’t based on the same traditional sources as many recently created scripts fonts. Dulcinea offers attractive options for the setting of texts and headlines: abundant ligatures and swashes along with intricate alternate characters. It sophisticated forms make it an ideal option for women’s magazines, recipe books, lingerie products or perfume packaging.

Regato is a hand made font ideal for your graphic project. Usage recommendations : Title, short text, children's book, poster, book cover, brochure, label, magazine

A hand lettered font with quirky style Specifics: Cute style with average high of uppercase Numerical, Punctuation, Multi language included Hope You enjoy it.

Water is a rounded hand-printed font ideal for graphic project. Usage recommendations : Title, short text, children’s book, poster, book cover, brochure, label, magazine

Ding pro! is a typographic family that contains many alternatives from ligatures to styles like Rough, Hand, UltraLight-Heavy, special for children-Youth titles.

The hand lettered titling on a vintage piece of sheet music for the song "Sweet Siamese" is the basis for Port of Call JNL.

Komentator is a monoline vintage script typeface which is created based on manual hand lettering with many features such as, stylistic set alternate, swashes.

Rice Bowl JNL is an Oriental-style typeface with a decidedly casual appearance - foregoing traditional structure for that of the look of hand-lettering.

Fazeta Sans is a perfect companion to serif typeface Fazeta. Two light weights were added, so the complete typeface consist of 14 fonts (7 weights + matching italics). The fine gradation lets you choose perfect weight for any type of project. Every font have 1140 glyphs – just like the serif version and contains the same features, so use and combining of whole typeface is very comfortable. Also fixed kerning allows better comfort for eyes by reading and shortens the length of the text. I tried to preserve sharp and cold impression from serif version, but some straight lines had to be curved due to the natural limitation of sans typefaces (for example the upper arch of “f” is shaped more smooth). However it keeps extremely open form. A little playfulness was left at the end of letters “k, K, and R”, but if you want, this can be eliminated by using a rigorous SS01 feature. Serifs were here transformed into a small yaw from main stroke and so enlive the monotony of sans kind of types. Also slight cutting the top of the letters helping to surprisingly vivid final impression. Fazeta Sans is therefore suitable for wide range of type sizes – from small marginalies to huge poster sizes. To see more please check the PDF specimen.

Introducing the innovative and original Josep Patau’s new recipe, salsa and wild-type master. 1. In a font, combine a bit of slightly outdated British slab types from the late Victorian period. If you find Vincent Figgins’s variety, do not discard. You'll find plenty to choose from in his specimens, some of then with unexpected vitality an enviably condition, despite it’s age. As aging wine, they had improve their quality with time. Cut Didones into thin slices and add. 2. In a blender, whisk the strength of these Slab serif with highly contrasted strokes from Bodoni or Didot’s neoclassical types. Adjust the mix to get a sweeter or spicier taste, but do not forget to emphasize the contrast to avoid the dressing off. 3. On the page, set the wide variety of weights as your menu demands. If you want to feed fill the stomach of the hungriest holders, use Bridone Titling as main course. If you are serving a traditional menu, starter, main and dessert, then simmer a combination of weights and sizes according to your space. It will not disappoint, much less your guests . 4. Spread thoroughly the page, serve and enjoy . If you like natural, switch to Bridona, your pages will thank you.

The Salden fonts are our tribute to the man who was dubbed the face of the Dutch book, and whose work is considered essential in 20th century Dutch design history. Helmut Salden’s exquisite book cover designs were the gold standard in the Netherlands for more than four decades. His influence over Dutch lettering artists and book designers ranges far and wide, and his work continues to be used commercially and exhibited to this very day. At the root of Salden’s design work was a unique eye for counter space and incredible lettering skills that never failed to awe, regardless of category or genre. This made our attention to his lettering all the more focused within our appreciation to his overall aesthetic. Though Salden never designed alphabets to be turned into typefaces (he drew sets of letters which he sometimes recycled and modified to fit various projects), we thought there was enough there to deduce what a few different typefaces by Salden would have looked like. The man was prolific, so there were certainly enough forms to guide us, and enough variation in style to push our excitement even further. And so we contacted the right people, obtained access to the relevant material, and had a lot of fun from there. This set covers the gamut of Salden’s lettering talents. Included are his famous caps, his untamed, chunky flare sans serif in two widths, his unique Roman letters and an italic companion and, most recognizable of all, his one-of-a-kind scripty upright italic lowercase shapes, which he used alongside Roman caps drawn specifically for that kind of combination titling. All the fonts in this set include Pan-European glyph sets. They’re also loaded with extras. Salden Roman (908 glyphs) and Salden Italic (976 glyphs) each come with built-in small caps (and caps-to-small-caps), quite a few ligatures, and two different sets of alternates. Salden Black and Salden Black Condensed (636 glyphs each) come with a set of alternates, and both lining and oldstyle figures. Salden Caps (597 glyphs) comes with a set of alternates, and Salden Titling (886 glyphs) comes with a quite a lot of swashed forms and alternates (including as many six variants for some forms), a few discretionary ligatures, and two sets of figures. There are also some form alternates for the Cyrillic and Greek sets included in all six fonts. These alphabets were enjoyably studied and meticulously developed over the past ten years or so. We consider ourselves very fortunate to be the ones bringing them to the world as our contribution to maintaining the legacy of a legendary talent and a great designer. The majority of the work was based on Salden’s original drawings, access to which was graciously provided by Museum Meermanno in The Hague. The Salden fonts were done in agreement with Stichting 1940-1945, and their sale will in part benefit Museum Meermanno.

Ignazio is a powerfull sans serif font family with modern touches. A balance of hard lines and smooth curve makes them able to stand on their own dynamically Ignazio includes all-caps fonts Features - Support for MAC or PC - Simple installation for Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, Photoshop, or Procreate (New Updated) - Support Multi-language Ignazio works great in any branding, logos, magazines, films. The different styles give you a full range to explore a whole host of applications.

This font was inspired by a 1950’s Royal Quiet De Luxe Typewriter, and features textured letters & symbols, creating a realistic look & feel without needing to source your own antique machine! Each keystroke on an old typewriter shows variations based on the ink ribbon & how hard or soft the typebars strike the ribbon & paper. This font was designed to provide multiple options for each letter so that you can further customize the look & feel of your text.

Drumonz is a death metal font made with a touch of darkness, featuring a heavy and death metal feel to compliment your design. Drumonz is very easy to use in any variation or writing combination, also perfect for metal band logos, merchandise, clothing, apparel, or anything else that calls for a metal feel. Here is tutorial how to use it : https://youtu.be/a0uHeXSmsCo Recomended Software to use: Corel Draw Adobe Photoshop Adobe Illustrator Clip Studio Paint

Chank created Zsazsa Galore as a fresh alternative to Mister Frisky, another jerky, hypercaffeinated interpretation of the traditional roman alphabet. The difference this time is that the new font has no descenders. Every letter comes to rest hard on the baseline. It sits there firmly rooted with branches wiggling around in the air. It was released as the Chank Font of the Month in October 1999 and it was named after Zsa Zsa Gabor because she is beautiful.

ITC Black Tulip was designed by Dudley Rees and inspired by the modular simplicity of the Greek fret band, an ancient repeating pattern formed by tracing a line at right angles between two horizontal rules to form an interlocking motif. Rees admired the discipline of the motif, I saw how that simple rigid rectangular network suggested an alphabet that would need little or no kerning," he says. He describes ITC Black Tulip as a "dramatic headline face"."

Monkey Rhumble is an exclusive piece made with a touch of darkness, featuring a heavy and death metal feel to compliment your design. Monkey Rhumble is very easy to use in any variation or writing combination with extra custom bracket, also perfect for metal band logos, merchandise, clothing, apparel, or anything else that calls for a metal feel. Here is tutorial how to use it : https://youtu.be/ezNu7hCqV-w Recomended Software to use: Corel Draw Adobe Photoshop Adobe Illustrator

Vedacity is a sophisticated glamorous script font, with modern calligraphy style that you'll hard to resist like the nowadays trend. Inspired from the society behaviour who always craving for the trends but still want to show something different yet special from it. Yes, that's why it came with a bunch of Stylistic Alternates of each letters because everybody loves a choices, in a pack. And also the Ligatures for every double letters to get the seamlessly handwritten looks.

Introduce Bomjites font. Calligraphy fonts are made by hand in detail on each letter character so that they can be combined with various kinds of writing design needs. This font is designed to produce lovely and beautiful words and sentences, creating beautiful writing has never been easier. Not limited to that, the bold calligraphy font is designed to keep paying attention to the beauty of each letter, there are alternate options for the letters which are certainly easy for you to access, so you can automatically customize the letters you want to enhance the visual appearance of your design project. This charming font also offers the beauty of abstract typography harmony for a wide variety of design projects, including digital natural handwriting for designs, quote designs, for social media business designs, advertisements, trademarks, food and beverage promotion banners, text, posters, a signature, and all designs require handwriting or whatever design you want. ============================================================================================================ What’s Included : File font Web Fonts Standard glyphs Ligature Works on PC & Mac Simple installations Accessible in Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, even work on Microsoft Word. PUA Encoded Characters – Fully accessible without additional design software. Fonts include multilingual support for; Afrikaans, Albanian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish Thank you for your purchase! Hope you enjoy our font!

OkayCursive began over coffee, in a local flower shop, where my wife takes a floral arrangement class. I discovered a book there, with old photographs from Paris of flower shop displays. What caught my eye in the background of one of these photos, was the hand-painted lettering on a sign. Inspired, I quickly sketched some of the letters on a napkin and stuck it in my pocket. I began to sketch more over the next few days, looking to construct a full-out cursive font with this distinct French look. I wanted my design to be creative & free flowing, but I also wanted it to be at least somewhat proper. So, I consulted some schoolbooks for reference on the correct cursive forms. After more drawing, I began to create the final vector art. Gradually, these ideas -- plus many hours of careful kerning and metrics -- came together to form OkayCursive. Use OkayCursive any time you want fancy, legible, and luxurious text. Works great if you are designing a logo, or use it to create some beautiful titling. Use it for advertisement copy, or even for short to medium-length bodies of text -- go ahead and have fun with it. OkayCursive is extended, containing the full West European diacritics & a full set of ligatures, making it suitable for multilingual environments & publications.

Ciseaux Matisse was inspired by the exhibition Drawing With Scissors, which I visited at the Kunsthalle Schirn in my hometown of Frankfurt am Main in 2003 and the book Jazz published in 1947 by Henri Matisse. Admittedly, before that time I wasn’t a fan of Matisse’s work, neither his late nor the early work. That definitely changed after the exhibition. While his motifs have been overused on postcards and mouspads, in front of the originals you forget those tiny pictures. Some of the works were massive—larger than 24ft. By cutting directly into the color Matisse created shapes with strong dynamics. Years later, in 2007, I used that inspiration to cut an exclusive font for a newspaper that I designed at that time (see Gallery Pictures). Later I developed that font into the four styles featured here. The cut-out style is a paper cutout; boxed is the paper background. Both linear and boxed linear have no curved outlines, so they are more aggressive. As drawing with scissors implies, all characters are cut by hand. With only uppercase letters, this font is designed for editorial use: headlines, slogans in ads, or musical usage in posters and flyers that need the little touch of the jazz scissors. In special cases the lowercase letters contain alternate shapes to the uppercase forms.

Now Appearing JNL is a digital version of some hand-lettering spotted on an early 1960s ad for a Miami Beach night club. Its fun, casual appearance makes it perfectly suitable for any project that conveys a relaxed atmosphere. The font was intentionally not kerned, so the free-flowing form of the lettering is at its best, but it can be set tight by hand if a more compact look is desired.

Introducing: World Pressure A rustic, dapper handwritten font with a personal charm. With quick dry strokes and a signature style, World Pressure is perfect for branding projects, homeware designs, product packaging - or simply as a stylish text overlay to any background image. World Pressure includes 4 font styles and additional swashes: World Pressure Regular handwritten script font containing upper & lowercase characters, numerals and a large range of punctuation. World Pressure Alternate This is a second version of World Pressure, with a completely new set of both lower and uppercase characters. If you wanted to avoid letters looking the same each time to recreate a custom-made style, or try a different word shape, simply switch to this font for an additional layout option. World Pressure Slant This is a third version of World Pressure, with a completely new set of both lower and uppercase characters in slant version. If you wanted to avoid letters looking the same each time to recreate a custom-made style, or try a different word shape, simply switch to this font for an additional layout option. World Pressure Alternate This is a forth version of World Pressure, with a completely new set of both lower and uppercase characters in slant version. If you wanted to avoid letters looking the same each time to recreate a custom-made style, or try a different word shape, simply switch to this font for an additional layout option. World Pressure Swashes A set of 26 hand-drawn swashes, the perfect finishing touch to underline your Northwell text. Simply install this as a separate font, select it from your font menu and type any A-Z Uppercase and Lowercase also Number 0-9 character to create a swash. Fonts are provided in OTF formats. Fonts include multilingual support. Ligatures are also available for several lowercase characters (double-letters which flow more naturally). These are only accessible via software with opentype capability or a glyphs panel, e.g. Photoshop/Illustrator.

Almost a half of a millennium after being mistaken for the original 4th century Gothic alphabet and falsely labeled "barbaric" by the European Renaissance, the blackletter alphabet was still flourishing exclusively in early 20th century Germany, not only as an ode to Gutenberg and the country's rich printing history, but also as a continuous evolution, taking on new shapes and textures influenced by almost every other form of alphabet available. Blackletter would continue to go strong in Germany until just before the second World War, when it died a political death at the height of its hybridization. For almost 50 years after the war, blackletter was very rarely used in a prominent manner, but it continued to be seen sparely in a variety of settings, almost as a subliminal reminder of western civilization's first printed letters; on certificates and official documents of all kinds, religious publications, holiday cards and posters, to name a few. In the early 21st century, blackletter type has been appearing sporadically on visible media, but as of late 2005, it is not known how long the renewed interest will last, or even whether or not it will catch on at all. The last few years before World War II were arguably the most fascinating and creative in modern blackletter design. During those years, and as demonstrated with the grid-based Leather font, the geometric sans serif was influencing the blackletter forms, taking them away from their previous Jugendstil (Art Nouveau) hybridizations. Blackhaus is a digitization and elaborate expansion of a typeface called Kursachsen Auszeichnung, designed in 1937 by Peterpaul Weiss for the Schriftguss foundry in Dresden. This is one of very few designs from that time attempting to infuse more Bauhaus than Jugendstil into the Blackletter forms. This is why we used a concatenation of the words blackletter and Bauhaus to name this face. The result of injecting Bauhaus elements into blackletter turned out to be a typeface that is very legible and usable in modern settings, while at the same time harking back to the historical forms of early printing. The original 1937 design was just one typeface of basic letters and numbers. After digitizing and expanding it, we developed a lighter version, then added a few alternates to both weights. The Rough style came as a mechanically-grunged afterthought, due to current user demand for such treatment. Having the flexibility of 2 weights and many alternates of a blackletter typeface is not a very common find in digital fonts. More specifically, having the flexibility of 2 weights and alternates of a 20th century blackletter typeface is almost unheard of in digital fonts. So the Blackhaus family can be quite useful and versatile in an imaginative designer's hands.

Introducing Kleptocracy: the compact industrial typeface that’s taking the design world by storm. With a sleek and efficient assembly line design, this font purrs where other factory-made fonts rattle and buzz. But don’t be fooled by its hard edges and utilitarian lines. Kleptocracy’s cursive elements add a touch of warmth and whimsy, bringing together the best of both worlds. From the gentle curves of the “g” to the playful loop of the “y”, this font is anything but stark and frigid. Available in three weights, three widths, and italics, Kleptocracy is the versatile typeface that can adapt to any project. Its compact design makes it perfect for small spaces and modern layouts, while its industrial roots give it a bold and confident presence. So whether you’re designing a logo, creating a website, or crafting the perfect brochure, Kleptocracy has you covered. It’s time to ditch those outdated fonts and upgrade to the sleek and stylish Kleptocracy. 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.

The famous roman type cut in Venice by Nicolas Jenson, and used in 1470 for his printing of the tract, De Evangelica Praeparatione, Eusebius, has usually been declared the seminal and definitive representative of a class of types known as Venetian Old Style. The Jenson type is thought to have been the primary model for types that immediately followed. Subsequent 15th-century Venetian Old Style types, cut by other punchcutters in Venice and elsewhere in Italy, are also worthy of study, but have been largely neglected by 20th-century type designers. There were many versions of Venetian Old Style types produced in the final quarter of the quattrocento. The exact number is unknown, but numerous printed examples survive, though the actual types, matrices, and punches are long gone. All these types are not, however, conspicuously Jensonian in character. Each shows a liberal amount of individuality, inconsistency, and eccentricity. My fascination with these historical types began in the 1970s and eventually led to the production of my first text typeface, Iowan Old Style (Bitstream, 1991). Sometime in the early 1990s, I started doodling letters for another Venetian typeface. The letters were pieced together from sections of circles and squares. The n, a standard lowercase control character in a text typeface, came first. Its most unusual feature was its head serif, a bisected quadrant of a circle. My aim was to see if its sharp beak would work with blunt, rectangular, foot serifs. Next, I wanted to see if I could construct a set of capital letters by following a similar design system. Rectangular serifs, or what we today call "slab serifs," were common in early roman printing types, particularly text types cut in Italy before 1500. Slab serifs are evident on both lowercase and uppercase characters in roman types of the Incunabula period, but they are seen mainly at the feet of the lowercase letters. The head serifs on lowercase letters of early roman types were usually angled. They were not arched, like mine. Oddly, there seems to be no actual historical precedent for my approach. Another characteristic of my arched serif is that the side opposite the arch is flat, not concave. Arched, concave serifs were used extensively in early italic types, a genre which first appeared more than a quarter century after roman types. Their forms followed humanistic cursive writing, common in Italy since before movable type was used there. Initially, italic characters were all lowercase, set with upright capitals (a practice I much admire and would like to see revived). Sloped italic capitals were not introduced until the middle of the sixteenth century, and they have very little to do with the evolution of humanist scripts. In contrast to the cursive writing on which italic types were based, formal book hands used by humanist scholars to transcribe classical texts served as a source of inspiration for the lowercase letters of the first roman types cut in Italy. While book hands were not as informal as cursive scripts, they still had features which could be said to be more calligraphic than geometric in detail. Over time, though, the copied vestiges of calligraphy virtually disappeared from roman fonts, and type became more rational. This profound change in the way type developed was also due in part to popular interest in the classical inscriptions of Roman antiquity. Imperial Roman letters, or majuscules, became models for the capital letters in nearly all early roman printing types. So it was, that the first letters in my typeface arose from pondering how shapes of lowercase letters and capital letters relate to one another in terms of classical ideals and geometric proportions, two pinnacles in a range of artistic notions which emerged during the Italian Renaissance. Indeed, such ideas are interesting to explore, but in the field of type design they often lead to dead ends. It is generally acknowledged, for instance, that pure geometry, as a strict approach to type design, has limitations. No roman alphabet, based solely on the circle and square, has ever been ideal for continuous reading. This much, I knew from the start. In the course of developing my typeface for text, innumerable compromises were made. Even though the finished letterforms retain a measure of geometric structure, they were modified again and again to improve their performance en masse. Each modification caused further deviation from my original scheme, and gave every font a slightly different direction. In the lower case letters especially, I made countless variations, and diverged significantly from my original plan. For example, not all the arcs remained radial, and they were designed to vary from font to font. Such variety added to the individuality of each style. The counters of many letters are described by intersecting arcs or angled facets, and the bowls are not round. In the capitals, angular bracketing was used practically everywhere stems and serifs meet, accentuating the terseness of the characters. As a result of all my tinkering, the entire family took on a kind of rich, familiar, coarseness - akin to roman types of the late 1400s. In his book, Printing Types D. B. Updike wrote: "Almost all Italian roman fonts in the last half of the fifteenth century had an air of "security" and generous ease extremely agreeable to the eye. Indeed, there is nothing better than fine Italian roman type in the whole history of typography." It does seem a shame that only in the 20th century have revivals of these beautiful types found acceptance in the English language. For four centuries (circa 1500 - circa 1900) Venetian Old Style faces were definitely not in favor in any living language. Recently, though, reinterpretations of early Italian printing types have been returning with a vengeance. The name Vendetta, which as an Italian sound I like, struck me as being a word that could be taken to signifiy a comeback of types designed in the Venetian style. In closing, I should add that a large measure of Vendetta's overall character comes from a synthesis of ideas, old and new. Hallmarks of roman type design from the Incunabula period are blended with contemporary concerns for the optimal display of letterforms on computer screens. Vendetta is thus not a historical revival. It is instead an indirect but personal digital homage to the roman types of punchcutters whose work was influenced by the example Jenson set in 1470. John Downer.