I, uh, don't know quite what to say. I'd toiled so long over Pumpkinseed back in '96 that I guess I needed a good, wild ride to shake out the head cramps, or something. Whatever grabbed me, it forced me to sit down and design a typeface real fast directly in Fontographer (had never done that before). Took less than two hours to finish the regular character set. No way to explain it, but the exercise actually paid off -- I think. And now that there was Speed Bump, there simply had to be a companion dingbat set. (Beats the heck out of me.) So check out Speed Bump's wacky character(s) and, if you're really bored, the 200-some-odd little pictures in Speed Bump Pi.

The hand composition typeface was developed at the Ossip Lehmann type foundry (St. Petersburg) in 1904-07 (after designs by Alexander Leo?). It was redeveloped at Polygraphmash in 1960s for slugcasting composition. Named after Russian Empress Elizabeth I (1709-61). Based on typefaces of George Revillon type foundry of 1840s, though some characters’ shapes were redrawn similar to Russian Academy of Sciences typefaces (mid-18th century). Sharp contrast, strong weight Modern Serif with archaic flavor. The typeface is useful in text and display composition, in fiction, historical, and art books, especially connected to the 18th or 19th centuries. It looks great in Russian classical literature such as Pushkin and Gogol works. The revised, improved and completed digital version was designed at ParaType in 2001 by Lyubov Kuznetsova.

Here at Comicraft we have seen the signs on the headline news, we have read the portents of things to come... yes, just as thunder is a sign of storm, just as pumpkins outside Ralph's on November the 1st are sure to be on sale, just as fresh produce becomes rotten, as sure as night turns to day, dark turns to gray, winter turns to spring and milk turns sour if you leave it out on the kitchen table overnight... Yes, here at Comicraft we know there's a signpost up ahead... a sign heading not into the twilight zone, but down a road of hope and hard work, a banner year, a red letter day, we know it's time to knuckle down, soldier on and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. Well, we should probably pull ourselves up by our bootstraps BEFORE we soldier on, NEVERTHELESS, here it is -- not a soundbite, not an unfulfilled campaign promise -- SignLanguage is a font that makes the impossible possible, a font that cuts the taxes for 95% of American families, a font that closes down Gitmo and brings our troops home from Iraq. Senator Joe "Six Pack" Biden has described SignLanguage as articulate and bright and clean -- and a nice-looking font. In conclusion, Comicraft recommends you elect Sign Language.

IngrimayneType has put letters inside a variety of objects, including bowling pins, book covers, coffee mugs, teapots, pumpkins, Christmas ornaments, train cars, tombstones, old bottles, circles, and rectangles. In each case the letters were placed on a single shape. The use of the Opentype feature of contextual alternatives makes it easy to use two different but alternating shapes. ButterflyWingz puts its letters on the right and left wings of a butterfly. The wings provide a large surface for drawing letters, but they have a odd shape so letters must be distorted to fit. The wings are symmetrical but some letters are not, so the right and left wing versions of the same letter are sometimes quite different. Without the contextual alternative feature one could design a typeface like ButterflyWingz but the user would have to alternate upper and lower case keys. With contextual alternatives turned on, the computer automatically alternates the letters creating a line of complete butterflies. Turning on the Opentype feature stylistic styles one (ss01) replaces the empty spaces with empty wings. However, sometimes an empty wing at the end of a line is unwanted and it can be removed by changing the typeface or by turning off the stylistic style for that character. The family contains two styles, a filled style and an outline style. They can be used separately or together in layers to add color. (Empty wings are on the logicalnot and registered characters.) ButterflyWingz is hard to read and should be used in small doses for decorative effects.

Maclean's is a weekly Canadian newsmagazine with a broad editorial mission. A typical issue covers everything from violence on the other side of the globe to the largest pumpkin grown in a local county. In 2001, Maclean's invited Rod McDonald to become part of the design team to renovate" the 96-year-old publication. The magazine wanted to offer its readers a typographic voice that was professional, clean, and easy to read. Above all, the typeface had to be able to speak about the hundreds of unrelated subjects addressed in each issue while remaining believable and uncontrived. A tall order, perhaps? Now add in that this would be the first text typeface ever commissioned by a Canadian magazine. McDonald, who some have called Canada's unofficial "typographer laureate," took on the challenge. McDonald used two historic models as the basis for Laurentian's design: the work of French type designer Claude Garamond, and that of the English printer and type founder, William Caslon. From Garamond Laurentian acquired its humanist axis, crisp serifs and terminals that mimic pen strokes. Caslon's letters are less humanistic, with a more marked contrast in stroke weight and serifs that appear constructed rather than drawn. These traits also made their mark on Laurentian. Using these two designs as a foundation, McDonald drew Laurentian with the narrow text columns and small type sizes of magazine composition in mind. He gave his letters strong vertical strokes and sturdy serifs, a robust x-height and a slightly compressed character width A tall order, per McDonald's genius is evident in the face's legibility, quiet liveliness and in the openness of the letters. The result is a typeface that not only met Maclean's demanding design brief, but also provides exceptional service in a wide variety of other applications. Laurentian is available in three weights of Regular, Semi Bold and Bold, with complementary italics for the Regular and Semi Bold, and a suite of titling caps."

Caslon Antique is a decorative American typeface that was designed in 1894 by Berne Nadall. It was originally called "Fifteenth Century", but was renamed "Caslon Antique" by Nadall's foundry, Barnhart Bros. & Spindler, in the mid-1920s. The design of the typeface is meant to evoke the Colonial era. Early printers would reuse metal type over and over again, and the faces would become chipped and damaged from use. Caslon Antique emulates this look. Despite the name, it is not a member of the Caslon family of typefaces. The renaming is believed to have been a marketing maneuver to boost the popularity of a previously unpopular typeface by associating it with the highly popular Caslon types. Caslon Antique is popular today when a "old-fashioned" or "gothic" look is desired. It is used by the musical group The Sisters of Mercy on their albums, for the logo of the musical Les Misérables, and for the covers of the books in A Series of Unfortunate Events. It is also frequently used on historical displays. It was used for the previous edition of the Warhammer Fantasy Role-Play. Most recently, it has been used on promotional material for the smash musical Monty Python's Spamalot on Broadway, the West End, and its tour of the United States. British 80's band The The also used the font in several of their music videos, usually displaying several lyrics from the song in the opening scenes. It used on the cover of Regina Spektor's album, Begin to Hope. This description was sourced (in part) from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

THE SPARK Uniform started as a spark of inspiration one day while I was shopping at the store. I was looking at some typography on a can of dog food and the idea popped into my head, “What if there was a geometric typeface with a circular O that when condensed, the O became straight sided, instead of becoming an oval?” I quickly sketched out the concept of Uniform and liked what I saw, the only problem was I was working full time as a graphic designer, and as a newly married husband, I didn’t have any time to make the extensive typeface. LETDOWN A year and a half later, shortly after the birth of my first child, my boss cut my hours in half. Although stressful, I saw this event as an opportunity to finally have time to complete the typeface I had in my head. I spent a couple months putting together a Kickstarter campaign, thinking it would be a smashing success, and I would be able to live off the donations long enough to complete the typeface. Wrong! The campaign was a flop and I was left discouraged and dejected, thinking that the great idea I had in my head would never become a reality... PERSEVERANCE At the end of the year, in December 2013, I decided to go for it and make this new type family no matter what it took. I began waking up a few hours before work each morning (getting only four hours of sleep each night) carefully crafting each individual glyph day by day. After nine months of hard work (and just about killing myself in the process!) in October 2014, I finally had a finished product ready to be released to the public! THE PINNACLE Fast forward a few years and now Uniform has reached it's pinnacle, Uniform Pro. Uniform Pro now offers extended language support including Cyrillic and Greek character sets, integrated italic styles, additional weights, and additional OpenType features.

The Bree font family is a spry sans serif by Veronika Burian and José Scaglione that delivers a spirited look and feel for branding and headline usage. As an upright italic, Bree shows a pleasant mix of rather unobtrusive capitals with more vivid lowercase letters, giving text a lively appearance. Bree is clearly influenced by handwriting. As such, some of its most characteristic features are the single-story ‘a’, the cursive ‘e’, the outstroke curves of ‘v’ and ‘w’, the flourished ‘Q’, and the fluid shapes of ‘g’, ‘y’, and ‘z’. Alternates of these letters are available when a more neutral look is desired. Bree has a touch of cheekiness, a wide stance for each character, and an extra-large x-height. All this adds up to a big personality, so even when set in small text there is no skimming past the words Bree voices. In 2019, the Bree font family got a huge update. A few shapes were updated or added (the ‘k’ and German capital ‘ß’), two entirely new weights were added (Book and Book Italic), and spacing was perfected. More than that, Vietnamese support was added to Bree Latin, and the Bree Greek and Bree Cyrillic scripts were designed from scratch to parallel the Latin’s tone. Additionally, Bree was designed in variable font format for those who want complete control over the font’s appearance while simultaneously saving digital weight in the form of kilobytes and megabytes. Bree is in the perfect position for the next digital revolution. The complete Bree font family, along with our entire catalogue, has been optimised for today’s varied screen uses. Bree has been chosen for such wide-ranging uses as Breast Cancer Awareness Month in the US, the branding for the country of Peru, and numerous layouts including mobile apps, magazines, newspapers, and books. Awards – Tipos Latinos exhibition 2008 – Several best-of-the-year typeface lists of 2008 MyFonts Top 10 Fonts of 2008 Smashing Magazine: 60 Brilliant Typefaces For Corporate Design https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/03/60-brilliant-typefaces-for-corporate-design/ Die besten Schriften 2008 http://www.fontwerk.com/619/die-besten-schriften-2008/ – Selected for Typographica’s Best Typefaces of 2008 – Won Bronze for Original Typeface in the 2009 European Design Awards

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/