Who haven't heard the phrase that ‘any past time was better’?. Although I sometimes find this phrase a little too pessimistic (because I try to think that the best is yet to come), it may be true regarding my passion, typography. I'm too young (29) unfortunately, and this means I did not have the pleasure of being contemporary with maybe the man who has influenced my work the most (1). The man that showed that letters are more than just letters to be read. Herb Lubalin (1918-1981), also called sometimes as ‘the rule basher’ (2), smashed the taboos and sacred rules of type design and gave it personality. He rejected the functionalist philosophy of europeans in favor of an eclectic and exuberant style. To him, letters were not merely vessels of form, they were objects of meaning. (3). Nowadays, when looking at his portfolio, who dares to deny that the term ‘typography’ and ‘beauty’ may go hand-in-hand without any problem? Ed Benguiat, one of Herb’s partners, still likes making jokes with the phrase “screw legibility, type should be beautiful” and what I understand of this is not to forget the rules, but to know and break them carefully. In an era of pure eclecticism, we, the lovers of flourishes and swashes, can't do nothing but admire all the legacy that Lubalin, this wonderful type-guru, left. My font Lubaline read as “the line of Lubalin” is my humble tribute to him. Those who know his work, may see the influences easily like in his ‘Beards’ (1976) and ‘The Sound of Music’ (1965) posters; the art-deco forms in many of his amazing logos and practically in all his creations where letters seem to be alive just like you and me. I really hope that the future finds me still learning more and more about type-design and letterforms, and like him, always willing to make innovations in my field: Because letters are not just letters to be read. NOTES (1) These are some of my fonts in which some of Lubalin’s influences can be seen (in order of creation): Reina, Aire, Erotica, String, Beatle, Heroe, Selfie, Model, Seventies, and many others that are still in progress. (2) (3) Steven Heller. Herb Lubalin: Rule Basher. U&lc (1998) http://www.printmag.com/imprint/my-favorite-lubalin/

Schism is a modulated sans-serif, originally developed from our Alias Didot typeface, as a serif-less version of the same design. It was expanded to three sub-families, with the thin stroke getting progressively heavier from Schism One to Schism Three. The different versions explore how this change in contrast between thick and thin strokes changes the character of the letterforms. The shape is maintained, but the emphasis shifts from rounded to angular, elegant to incised. Schism One has high contrast, and the same weight of thin stroke from Light to Black. Letter endings are at horizontal or vertical, giving a pinched, constricted shape for characters such as a, c, e and s. The h, m, n and u have a sharp connection between curve and vertical, and are high shouldered, giving a slightly square shape. The r and y have a thick stress at their horizontal endings, which makes them impactful and striking at bolder weights. Though derived from an elegant, classic form, Schism feels austere rather than flowery. It doesn’t have the flourishes of other modulated sans typefaces, its aesthetic more a kind of graphic-tinged utility. While in Schism Two and Three the thin stroke gets progressively heavier, the connections between vertical and curves — in a, b, n etc — remain cut to an incised point throughout. The effect is that Schism looks chiselled and textural across all weights. Forms maintain a clear, defined shape even in Bold and Black, and don’t have the bloated, wide and heavy appearance heavy weights can have. The change in the thickness of the thin stroke in different versions of the same weight of a typeface is called grading. This is often used when the types are to used in problematic print surfaces such as newsprint, or at small sizes — where thin strokes might bleed, and counters fill in and lose clarity, or detail might be lost or be too thin to register. The different gradings are incremental and can be quite subtle. In Schism it is extreme, and used as a design device, giving three connected but separate styles, from Sans-Didot to almost-Grotesk. The name Schism suggests the differences in shape and style in Schism One, Two and Three. Three styles with distinct differences, from the same start point.

Rahere Esoteric is a gothic-flavoured, quasi-Roman display font with an eccentric persona and more quirks than a Tim Burton film. A member of the extended Rahere typeface family, it’s the enigmatic cousin of Rahere Roman Display & Rahere Sans. This is a niche display font that doesn’t try to please everyone. Rahere Esoteric revels in its mystical aura, using a bewildering array of ligatures to magically transmute itself as characters loop, curl, jerk and strut, randomly connecting and disconnecting into words like a retro-futuristic steam train clattering along a disused railway track, challenging and delighting the reader at the same time. To add more sparkle, there are alternatives, inferior and superior caps plus a [Wicca] basketful of symbols, ornaments, weird faces and even a snake-infused ampersand. Whilst Rahere Esoteric has been designed primarily as an all-caps font, the lowercase slots contain small caps with corresponding numerals. However, because this is an arcane, unpredictable font, order and regularity are frowned upon, which means there are no tabular numerals – so company reports or accounts are a solid no! Unless they’re for the Golden Circle of Alchemists PLC or Gothic Blackstar Corporation. It is ideal for all things pagan, esoteric, alchemy, other-worldly or magic-related projects and particularly useful for music genres across the Gothic / Darkwave / Ethereal spectrum. What about legibility? Hey, look into my eyes: Esoteric is all about the mystique. If a secondary font is needed for the important stuff, I recommend its cousin, Rahere Sans, which pairs beautifully with this display font and is perfect for long passages or small text. The initial idea for Rahere Esoteric came about during a visit to Whitby, a small coastal town in Yorkshire, UK and famous for its inclusion in Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula. A Steampunk festival was in full swing and the narrow streets of the town centre were teeming with people adorned in a glorious fusion of clothing and accessories influenced by a love of 19th-century life, science fiction, horror, fashion and art. I was fascinated by the juxtapositions of colour, patterns, material and style – archaic mechanical Sci-fi, gothic, the American Wild West and romantic Victorian. But what intrigued me the most, somehow, all the disparate elements worked as a whole. Thus, like Frankenstein, this font jolted into existence. Supported languages include Western Europe, Vietnamese, Central/Eastern Europe, Baltic, Turkish and Romanian.

Schism is a modulated sans-serif, originally developed from our Alias Didot typeface, as a serif-less version of the same design. It was expanded to three sub-families, with the thin stroke getting progressively heavier from Schism One to Schism Three. The different versions explore how this change in contrast between thick and thin strokes changes the character of the letterforms. The shape is maintained, but the emphasis shifts from rounded to angular, elegant to incised. Schism One has high contrast, and the same weight of thin stroke from Light to Black. Letter endings are at horizontal or vertical, giving a pinched, constricted shape for characters such as a, c, e and s. The h, m, n and u have a sharp connection between curve and vertical, and are high shouldered, giving a slightly square shape. The r and y have a thick stress at their horizontal endings, which makes them impactful and striking at bolder weights. Though derived from an elegant, classic form, Schism feels austere rather than flowery. It doesn’t have the flourishes of other modulated sans typefaces, its aesthetic more a kind of graphic-tinged utility. While in Schism Two and Three the thin stroke gets progressively heavier, the connections between vertical and curves — in a, b, n etc — remain cut to an incised point throughout. The effect is that Schism looks chiselled and textural across all weights. Forms maintain a clear, defined shape even in Bold and Black, and don’t have the bloated, wide and heavy appearance heavy weights can have. The change in the thickness of the thin stroke in different versions of the same weight of a typeface is called grading. This is often used when the types are to used in problematic print surfaces such as newsprint, or at small sizes — where thin strokes might bleed, and counters fill in and lose clarity, or detail might be lost or be too thin to register. The different gradings are incremental and can be quite subtle. In Schism it is extreme, and used as a design device, giving three connected but separate styles, from Sans-Didot to almost-Grotesk. The name Schism suggests the differences in shape and style in Schism One, Two and Three. Three styles with distinct differences, from the same start point.

Monograms or connected letters are very popular; apart from looking elegant, the monogram will also present an impression that sticks in the eyes of the audience. Lougra has more than 100 monograms or ligatures, making designing an initial or logo easier. Lougra is elegant and minimal modern sans serif. It has three contrast options which are display, regular and text.

FeggoliteKeyed has letters on rounded rectangles with shadows. The letter shapes are from a decorative, monospaced font called FeggoliteMono. The typeface contains characters that will add color to letters. There are two ways to do this. One uses layers and the other a combination of characters, some with zero-width. A file in the gallery explains the ways that this can be done.

Rebellious Brush marker font is a hand lettered brush script. What fun I've had from the beginning using pencil on paper to practising creating the glyphs with several types of markers! You'll notice that there are a couple of swashes in the preview pictures - I haven't advertised these because they are only accessible via a glyphs panel using the OTF file supplied.

Valute is a custom font with variable typeface, but at first glance it looks very mischievous. Very thincontrasting lines are very legible with heavy use of paragraph text. We made Valute with 9 weights that include ligatures and are multilingual. We will make language and feature updates in the future as this is a long-term project that we will be building on.

The design of Eurotech Pro was inspired by Thannhaeuser’s Technotyp font family which was cut by Typoart, Dresden, in 1949. Eurotech is not a mere revival of the old Typoart version but many letterforms have been updated and modernized. The Cyrillic letters are designed entirely by myself. Eurotech Pro is well suited for technical purposes, like catalogs, manuals or articles which are multilingual.

Blue On Blue is a display font not intended for text use. It was designed specifically for display, headline, logotype, branding, and similar applications. Blue On Blue has an uppercase alphabet, numbers, and punctuation. For convenience, the uppercase alphabet is repeated under the lowercase keys. Only the portions of the characters that are outlined by the 3D-simulated depth are visible.

A revival of “Gras Vibert”, a French fat face originally cast by the Didot typefoundry in Paris. It was cut in 1840 by Vibert, an engraver employed by the foundry. The capitals are heavier than the lowercase letters, and the characters g, k, y and & are rather peculiarly shaped, exaggerating the vertical stress. The font is designed for large sizes.

Quartz was originally published on the shop Font Forestry, but they are planning on closing - So now Quartz will live on Hustle Supply Co. Quartz is a minimalist All-Caps Sans Serif typeface that comes in 7 different weights. It's perfect for projects looking for that minimalist / clean aesthetic. Quartz includes regular, oblique, thin, bold & outlined versions. Western European Characters are included. Thanks!

Habanera's design is based on the idea of taking perfectionist geometric shapes and making them funky! With gentle tweaks here and there, the glyphs are deliberately designed to look more humane and fun. Same fonts are also presented with round corners, giving it an even more gentle look. Latin poster design and graphic art was an inspiration to design Habanera.

Lisboa Swash is a display humanist sans-serif typeface and it was designed for big sizes purposes. The uppercase letterforms are much more decorative than the lowercase, but both contain hook-head terminals and few contrast. This typeface family contain stylish alternates characters which are more calligraphic than the main version. This typeface family has different encoding languages (Latin, Central Europe and Baltic).

The Stomp Family is a set of three different fonts, Swirl, Flowers and Circles which are designed to be used with Stomp Black to create dual colored type for bright and exciting images. Metrics and Kerning information for the four faces are identical so that they overlay perfectly. Stomp Black is also very usable on its own for bold, high impact type.

This serif typeface was designed to be simple and neutral on text sizes, there descender proportions are short and the x-height is large. The lowercase italics contain different structure from roman characters, but the most differentiation detail is the fact the ascender and descender strokes don’t contain serifs. Italics characters are slightly more narrow and condensed than roman letterforms.

Frames and Borders Too is the follow-up font to Outside the Line’s top selling font Frames and Borders. These borders are a more playful take on borders that are packaged with layout and drawing programs. All hand-drawn for that touch of whimsy. And check out Rae’s newest frame font Frames & Banners and the ever favorite Frames and Borders.

Barrowboy was inspired by the handwritten sales tickets that are still to be found on market stalls and fruit barrows, and are as familiar as the street cries that accompany them. The signage is mostly confined to numerals, so translating it into a font is pretty much a work of imagination. See also my other fun fonts Bebopalula, Calypso and Pier Arcade.

IngyStarTilings allows one to create a variety of patterns that have stars. Some of them are quite common and others less so. A sample file is available that shows possible patterns that can be constructed with this typeface, including some non-star repeating patterns. As the posters indicate, some of the patterns constructed with the regular version are intended to be multicolored.

Some words from the foundry: The Pristine Light fonts are clean and crisp, sans serif, uppercase only. They were designed specifically for those applications where uppercase text is appropriate, such as display, headline, logotype, branding, and similar applications. There are numbers, punctuation, accented characters, symbols, and miscellaneous characters. For convenience the uppercase alphabet is repeated under their respective lowercase keys.

Nickvic is a font that you can instantly download. You can use this font in Photoshop, Illustrator, or any other program that will allow you to import fonts. This font is for personal and commercial use. Please note that this is a digital download, you will not be sent anything physical. All sales are final. Refunds or exchanges are not accepted.

Yuli is my daughter - she was born on February 13th, 2014. I named this font after her, because there are some similarities. Both are bouncy and happy, playful and quirky, funny and happy - and above all: cute and cuddly. Yuli font was loosely based on Bodoni and Spumoni - two typefaces I like a lot. Yuli speaks a lot of languages.

The Hybi12-Arome is another crossover font family with characteristics of Grotesque and Brushscript. It’s friendly and charming look is built out of geometrical and free-hand details. The fonts are offering a huge character set for usage in many languages. Also thousands of kerning pairs within each style are obligatory. Hybi12-Arome is perfectly suitable for advertising, posters and private printings.

Green On Green is a display font not intended for text use. It was designed specifically for display, headline, logotype, branding, and similar applications. Green On Green has an uppercase alphabet, numbers, and punctuation. For convenience, the uppercase alphabet is repeated under the lowercase keys. Only the portions of the characters that are outlined by the 3D-simulated depth are visible.

Hello! Introducing a decorative font named Chewing Gum. It's an abstract shape smooth typeface with curly elements. For the English alphabet, there are alternative characters included. It basically simplified letters that are more readable in small sizes (You can access these letters by activating a "Stylistic Alternates" on your OpenType panel). Twelve fancy ligatures will make your lettering more organic and natural.

BMF Zodiac Pi is part of the BMF Symbols Collection, a gorgeous, versatile and highly original family of symbols (drawings, icons, pictograms). Zodiac Pi is probably the funniest and most playful collection of astrology-related images you’ll likely to find. The signs of the Zodiac are included in several styles, and the symbols of the planets are included in informal, hand-rendered versions.

NeuAltisch is a calligraphic version of a modernized, more rounded Fraktur. Blackletter fonts of this sort are useful for decorative purposes in certificates, invitations, labeling, and advertising. The family has two weights, plus three versions that are shadowed or striped. The shadowed versions have been deconstructed so that they and their derived font can be used in layers to add color.

Frederick Cody, as known as Buffalo Bill, and his renowned travelling Western Circus are now celebrated through the creation of the Buffalo Circus and the Buffalo Western type fonts, both developed quite in the spirit of the stirring wood type fonts from the 19th century. All characters are fully hand traced and vectorized and provided with appealing glyphs and cool catchwords.

Valentine Moon is a unique and beautiful font. This font is decorated with natural letters and is very unique. Not only that, the decorations on the letters are also specially designed so that they are very easy to use. This font is perfect for Valentine's, weddings, invitations, birthdays, promotions, promotions on social media, product promotion, beauty, logos, branding, banners, posters, typography.

"Leonisa" is a beautiful and elegant monoline script font. This font is perfect for all your work. The embellishments in this font are very easy to use and are also equipped with procedures for using them. This font is suitable for promotion, business, summer, spring, traveling, holiday, quotes, wedding, invitation, greeting card, birthday, potography, logo, poster, branding, banner, print and others.

Transistor is a decorative and electronic serif typeface. One of the historical connection was the Didot, development in French. Transistor typeface was designed from the concept and experimentation with electronic circuits. The main typographic proportion are connected with the modern typeface, like Didot where the letterforms are inspired from the point nib pen design approach but also with electronic type style letterforms.

Comixed RP Bold and Comixed RP Bold Outline are two new fonts designed by British designer Roy Preston and released by BluHead Studio, LLC. Comixed is a bold, condensed cap-only typeface, with a lively, animated charm. The Outline version turns up the fun factor by adding a drop shadow. Used alone or together, both are great for snappy, eye-catching headlines!

Friem is a hand drawn font inspired by fonts that are usually used for children’s book titles that have a bold, messy and funny impression. Available in two clean and textured styles, this font is suitable for use for logos, book titles, movie posters, YouTube content, quotes, and more. There are ligatures that add features to this font, only in uppercase characters.

The Penman fonts are partially based on the 19th century penmanship of one of the designer’s ancestors, and originally created for a personal mailing with an “old-times tradition” flavor. The fonts are lightly pair-kerned, in order to control punctuation and numeral spacing. Auto-kerning should be turned on, and tracking should be checked to make sure all characters join well.

Designed to be a square font that isn’t square, Pleroid takes its cues from the shape of a square when “bulged” outward like a balloon. The caps are all rounded, the verticals are straight, and it has the feel of an old cathode-ray tube monitor—just the kind of thing for a retro-futuristic view of science fiction. Your robot approves.

White On White is a display font not intended for text use. It was designed specifically for display, headline, logotype, branding, and similar applications. White On White has an uppercase alphabet, numbers, and punctuation. For convenience, the uppercase alphabet is repeated under the lowercase keys. Only the portions of the characters that are outlined by the 3D-simulated depth are visible.

Demotte is a display face constructed from triangular blocks (wedges) and some circles. It comes in two styles. In one style the triangular blocks point up so that the letters are bottom heavy, and in the other the blocks point down so that the letters are top heavy. Also included in the family is a distorted version of the design.

The Penman fonts are partially based on the 19th century penmanship of one of the designer’s ancestors, and originally created for a personal mailing with an “old-times tradition” flavor. The fonts are lightly pair-kerned, in order to control punctuation and numeral spacing. Auto-kerning should be turned on, and tracking should be checked to make sure all characters join well.

Sport Numbers contains classic sport number designs, similar to those that appear on sport uniforms and competition vehicles, in the proportions of 6 x 10, 8 x 10, 10 x 10, and 12 x 10, both vertical and oblique. The vertical numbers are located under the character set and the oblique numbers are located under the respective keys of the shift + character set.

Reaf Singer is a modern monoline typeface/font designed with carefully handcrafted. This perfectly made to be applied in logo or branding, stationery, books, packaging, fashion, magazines, t-shirt, novels, labels and many advertising purposes. Features: Uppercase, Lowercase, Number, Punctuation, Symbol, Multilingual, Ligature, Alternate, Swash. All the pictures used in the preview are not included. They are intended only for illustration purpose.