Schotis Text is a workhorse typeface designed for perfect reading on running texts. Its design is based in Scotch Roman 19th-century style but designed from scratch, with a more contemporary and not nostalgic look. It has seven weights plus matching italics, with 1100 glyphs per font, with a very extended character set for Latin based languages as well as Vietnamese, and shows all its potential with OpenType-savvy applications. Every font includes small caps, ligatures, old-style, lining, proportional and tabular figures, superscript, subscript, numerators, denominators, and fractions. The Scotch Romans were one of the most used letters during the 19th and early 20th century, but they don’t have their own place in the main typographical classifications. They appeared at the beginning of the 19th century with Pica No. 2 in the catalog of William Miller (1813) and assumed the British route towards high contrast and vertical axis modern Romans. In fact, they were called just Modern. In opposition to the continental route of Fournier, Didot, and Bodoni, the English way opted for a wider, more legible letter also resistant to bad printing conditions. The name Schotis comes from the misspelling of Scottish that gave the name to a popular dance in Madrid in the 19th-century. It first was called Schotis and today is knows as Chotis.

My motivation for designing the Lalibela family (which is based on Bodoni) was to pay homage to Ethiopic script. The script has been around for about 3 000 years, but I took artistic licence to deviate from the original model and add personal touches. I chose Bodoni as a historical model because of its display value and not its text size use because the extreme contrast made it difficult to read at small sizes. A Modern typeface characterized by consistently horizontal stress, flat and un-bracketed serifs, and a high contrast between thin and thick strokes, were the final step in typography two-hundred-year journey away from calligraphy. The austerity, simplicity and greater contrast style was perfected.Contrary to all the refinements in Bodoni, I have revisited calligraphy with the font Lalibela that mimics Ethiopic Script. It was drawn with a much larger x height and less geometric than Bodoni for its primary use as a display font. For example, a lot of italic serifs were added to the roman face as well as 16 additional ligatures to obtain more a feel of calligraphy. I made the serifs thicker and bracket one side with straight steps obtaining a reduced contrast to withstand breaking up at smaller sizes.An additional variant, "Lalibela Alternate" was designed to provide an interesting mixing possibilities with the Bold face for more expressive headlines.

Elliptical The squareness of curves. That was the elliptical – in more than one sense – notion being explored in the making of FS Hackney. The squareness of curves and vertical terminals to create a gentle, soft sans serif, with a little bit of magic. A momentary thought – “It doesn’t have to be like this” – provided the spur to explore the verticals and skeletons of letterforms beyond conventional type design limits. A 12-month gestation period gave rise to a font with a larger-than-usual character set, including non-lining figures, small caps and superior and inferior numbers. It’s a collection that speaks confidently for itself. Assertive It was the Hackney carriage – the black London cab – that gave this font its name, not the north London neighbourhood. Solid, dependable, effective and built to last, FS Hackney was honed to perform in all conditions. Cool, compelling lines and a satisfying overall simplicity lend FS Hackney its assertive air. Assured, versatile and effective; just like a black cab (but without the grumbling). Machined Over a string of meetings, Jason Smith and FS Hackney designer Nick Job worked out how to infuse Nick’s sketched letterforms with Fontsmith’s familiar geniality. “Nick is very meticulous and produces very clean design work,” says Jason. “Hackney is ideal for branding as it’s very clear and its quirks are sensible ones, not odd ones, that don’t distract from the message.”

Trajan The original template for this one-weight, all-caps font was the inscription on Trajan’s Column, carved in AD 113 to celebrate the emperor Trajan’s victory in the Dacian Wars. College student Jason Smith copied the stone lettering from the cast on display in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. In Roman times, the signmaker would paint letters onto stone with a wide brush for the stone mason to chisel out later. The signwriter would end each stroke with a flick of his brush, which the mason would also carve into the stone. Ecce (as they would have said in Rome): the serif was born. Hand-crafted “I first drew this typeface when I was 17,” says Jason. “I drew it with a very sharp 9H pencil on polydraw film. “Then, using a Rotring pen, I inked the letters in and scraped back the serifs so they were perfectly sharp. These letters were then reduced on a PMT camera. I’d designed my first typeface, although it wasn’t digitised till much later.” Digitised Years after Jason had drawn the original typeface, its transfer into digital form made further refinements necessary. The serifs and weights needed thickening slightly, creating a crisp, new version whose delicate elegance is best appreciated in larger sizes. A classically-inspired font, timeless and perfectly-proportioned, to reflect the refinement of premium brands.

Introducing Madriz, a slab serif font with a retro feel that's perfect for any project that needs a touch of old-school charm. With over 32 fonts in one font family, Madriz offers a wide range of styles to suit any need. You can choose from Thin to Black weights and Regular to Extra Expanded widths to create your perfect look. Madriz is inspired by the old-school signage of Madrid, Spain. The name "Madriz" is actually the affectionate nickname that Madrileños, the people of Madrid, gave to their city. The font's bold, blocky letters capture the essence of Madrid's vibrant and historic streets. Madriz's versatile nature makes it a great choice for a wide range of projects. Its bold, retro style is perfect for showcasing heritage brands or giving a modern touch to classic designs. Madriz can also be used to create a sense of nostalgia, making it ideal for retro-themed projects or campaigns. Here are some of the ways you can use Madriz: Titles and headings: Madriz's bold, eye-catching style is perfect for titles and headings. Text blocks: Madriz's wide range of weights and widths makes it suitable for text blocks, from body copy to large paragraphs. Logos and branding: Madriz's retro charm makes it a great choice for logos and branding. With its 32 font styles and support for over 90 languages, Madriz is an incredibly powerful tool for any designer. It can be used to create a variety of looks, from classic and elegant to modern and edgy. Whether you're working on a print project, a web design, or an app, Madriz has the potential to make a lasting impression. Madriz is the perfect font for anyone who wants to add a touch of old-school charm to their designs. With its wide range of styles and features, Madriz is sure to make a statement in any project. Would you like to get 5 completely free fonts worth over $75? No tricks, no hidden words, terms or anything. Just subscribe to my newsletter, make sure to check your email to approve the subscription, add me to your contacts so that the emails don't end up in spam folder and you will get 5 fonts for free. The fonts are packed with alternates, ligatures and some even come with extra goodies. Happy creating everyone!

Kosnat Trunks is a striking sans-serif display font that seamlessly blends retro aesthetics with a touch of modern design. With its wavy ligatures and a whopping 920 meticulously crafted glyphs, this font is a typographic masterpiece that will elevate your design projects to new heights. Key Features: Retro Charm: Kosnat Trunks exudes a delightful retro charm that harks back to the styles of the past, making it perfect for vintage-inspired designs. Wavy Ligatures: The unique wavy ligatures add a playful and dynamic element to the font, making your text visually captivating and memorable. Vast Glyph Library: With an extensive collection of 920 glyphs, Kosnat Trunks offers you unparalleled versatility in your design work. This includes uppercase and lowercase characters, punctuation, symbols, and special characters. PUA Unicode: Kosnat Trunks supports the Private Use Area (PUA) Unicode, ensuring compatibility across various platforms and applications. This feature allows you to access alternate characters and glyphs effortlessly. Multilingual Support: Whether your project requires Latin-based characters or extends to various international languages, Kosnat Trunks has you covered with its comprehensive multilingual support. Ideal Usage: Vintage Branding: Create eye-catching logos and branding materials for retro-inspired businesses and products. Poster Art: Craft attention-grabbing posters and promotional materials that demand attention. Editorial Design: Elevate your magazine layouts, book covers, and editorial spreads with this unique font. Packaging: Design packaging that stands out on the shelf and tells a compelling story. Web Design: Use Kosnat Trunks to add a touch of nostalgia and personality to your website headers and titles. Kosnat Trunks is not just a font; it's a design tool that empowers you to infuse your projects with a sense of nostalgia and style. Elevate your typography game with this versatile and captivating typeface.

While the Aspire family finds its roots of inspiration in the ACURA automotive company logo, with its wider base, the Aspire Narrow family condenses those styles into something more suitable for larger bodies of text in a more standardized width. Aspire pays homage the techno display styling of the inspiration logotype, further evolving beyond its brand inspired origin to give birth to a font family that pulls on modern and historical styles. It adopts a sturdy yet approachable style with its uniform stroke forms and curves, and goes on to include a lowercase, numerals, and a comprehensive range of weights, creating a straightforward, uncompromising collection of typefaces that lend a solid foundation and a broad range of expression for designers. Here’s what’s included with the Aspire Narrow Family bundle: 477 glyphs per style - including Capitals, Lowercase, Numerals, Punctuation and an extensive character set that covers multilingual support of latin based languages. (see the 6th graphic for a preview of the characters included) Stylistic Alternates - alternate characters that remove the angled stencil cuts for a more standardized text look. 3 weights in the family: Light, Regular, & Black. 3 obliques in the family, one for each weight: Light, Regular, & Black. Fonts are available in TTF & OTF formats. The TTF format is the standard go to for most users, although the OTF and TTF function exactly the same. Here’s why the Aspire Narrow Family is for you: - You’re in need of a narrow automotive sans font family with a range of weights and obliques. - You’re love that ACURA letter styling, and want to design with a narrow font within that genre. - You’re looking for an alternative to Eurostile with more stylized letterforms. - You’re looking for a clean techno typeface for your starship console labelling. - You just like to collect quality fonts to add to your design arsenal.

Our new Hamburger font is based on the old classic Brush Script design with many new additions. We've added many alternates to the design including lowercase swash tail letters, swash underscores and a few alternate uppercase letters. Upright scripts are popular these day so new to this old type design is a near upright script version, a lot of hand work went into producing it. One of the biggest problems with the old Brush Script font is that people use it as all caps, which doesn't look good because of the extended swash on the top left side of the caps letters. We've fixed that problem by making an all caps version where the caps in the lowercase position have the top left swash tucked in to help the letters display better as an all caps font. We've also created a small caps version, again the small caps lowercase have all the top left swashes tucked in to bring the letters closer together for a better display. Also new to this font are two higher x-height versions that are ideal for signage. The first is Hamburger X which stands for extra x-height and the second is Hamburger SPX which stands for super x-height. Both of these higher x-height fonts are suitable for signage on a building, billboard and vehicle lettering where you're looking for faster readability from moving traffic. We've designed a new lowercase b and moved the original to an alternate position. We've also redesigned the uppercase C bringing the bottom up to the baseline and moved the original C to an alternate position. The original lowercase g was open at the top, we've closed it and we're not offering the original g as an alternate.

Introducing "Wasleyton," a vintage ephemera font that weaves the elegance of a bygone era into your modern design projects. Drawing inspiration from the timeless charm of elegant signage, gold leaf craftsmanship, and the artistry of old label products, Wasleyton is more than just a font—it's a journey into the aesthetics of the past. Unleash the power of nostalgia as Wasleyton offers a plethora of alternate characters, ensuring your designs are not just eye-catching but also uniquely authentic. The versatility of this font makes it a perfect choice for a range of applications, from authentic logos and elegant headings to the artistry of sign painting and captivating posters. Infuse your projects with a touch of vintage sophistication as Wasleyton lends its charm to letterheads, branding materials, magazines, album covers, and book covers. Watch as your designs come alive in movies, apparel, flyers, and label designs, each one telling a story of craftsmanship and timeless style. Combine Wasleyton with other fonts, be it a script for a touch of fluid elegance, a serif for classic appeal, or a sans serif for a modern twist. Add a few effects, and suddenly, your project transforms into a masterpiece—classic yet contemporary, elegant yet bold. Elevate your design game with Wasleyton's ability to transport your audience to a different era. Whether you're working on product packaging that demands attention or creating an atmosphere on a movie poster, Wasleyton brings that touch of vintage authenticity that turns your project from ordinary to extraordinary. In summary, Wasleyton isn't just a font; it's a time machine to the aesthetics of yesteryears. Perfect for logos, signage, posters, branding, magazines, album covers, and much more, Wasleyton is your key to infusing a timeless vintage charm into the modern design landscape. Add it to your toolkit, and let your creativity unfold in a tapestry of nostalgia and elegance.

"Saint Petersburg" fonts were created to look as close to a natural handwritten script as possible by including over 20 ligatures. With built-in OpenType features, this script comes to life as if you are writing it yourself. It's highly recommended to use it in OpenType capable software - there are plenty out there nowadays as technology catches up with design. Other than Photoshop, Illustrator and Indesign, many standard simple programs now come with Opentype capabilities - even the most basic ones such as Apple’s TextEdit, Pages, Keynote, iBooks Author, etc. Even Word has found ways to incorporate it. Your download will receive 4 font files, designed to work as perfect companions or simply as strong standalone typefaces. WHAT'S INCLUDED : 1. Saint Petersburg • A clean, free-flowing script font containing upper & lowercase characters, numerals and a large range of punctuation. 2. Saint Petersburg Alt • This is a second version of Saint Petersburg Script, with a completely new set of upper & lowercase 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. 3. Saint Petersburg Slant • The Slant Version of the point 1. 4. Saint Petersburg Slant Alt • The Slant Version of the point 2. I surveyed mostly common letter combinations and made 20 Discretionary ligatures with following letter combos: aa bb ee ff ll ss tt at et it ot sl st rt ut att ett itt ott utt (in Saint Petersburg & Slant Version) aa bb ee ff ll ss tt at et it ot sl st rt ut att ett itt ott utt (in Saint Petersburg Alt & Slant Version) By using these ligatures, you can give realistic handlettered style, escaping font "pattern" effect.

Aramus is a new serif font in my continuing objective of designing book fonts that I can really use. In many ways, Aramus is a very different direction for me. It comes from a scan of an old display face that has been radically modified to a much smaller x-height than I have been using lately, plus taller ascenders. Many of the characters needed a lot of correction to bring them into my taste. In general, I have decided that many of my fonts create a type color that is too dense. Aramus is an attempt to get away from that look. Although Amitale has been a very successful book family and excellent to work with, I find I still need something more open with a lighter color. Aramus is the first look at the new direction. The original hand-cut serifs vary a lot, different for almost every character. This gives a little looseness and helps the lightness I am looking for. It will be interesting to see where this all goes. This is a normal serif for me in that it has caps, lowercase, small caps with the appropriate figures for each case. This font has all the OpenType features in the set for 2009. I didn't bother with the CE accents (though I can add them upon request. They will be in the final new book family). There are several ligatures for your fun and enjoyment: bb gg ff fi fl ffi ffl ffy fj ft tt ty Wh Th and more. Like all of my fonts, there are: caps, lowercase, small caps, proportional lining figures, proportional oldstyle figures, & small cap figures, plus numerators, denominators, superiors, inferiors, and a complete set of ordinals 1st through infinity. Enjoy!

The aviation world contains loads of stylish logotypes, from handwritten scripts to geometric styles and so on. The Avionic Condensed family finds its origins of inspiration in the Air China company logotype, and from there has been expanded upon to create a large stylistic family of 40 fonts. Avionic celebrates the geometric sans serif styling of the original logotype, evolving beyond the condensed all capital set logo to include a lowercase designed in parity with the original design style, as well as many weights and widths to offer a fresh diversity. Each subfamily includes a full standard character set with expansive international support of latin based languages, and 5 weights jumping from book to black, along with 5 accompanying obliques. This family is ready to chart a course for your design destination, whatever it may be. Here's what's included with the Avionic Family bundle: 370 glyphs per style - including Capitals, Lowercase, Numerals, Punctuation and an extensive character set that covers multilingual support of latin based languages. 5 weights in each subfamily: Book, Regular, Bold, Heavy, & Black. • 4 widths in the collection: Condensed, Regular, Wide, and Extra Wide. Accompanying Obliques with each weight/width style. Fonts are provided in TTF & OTF formats. The TTF format is the standard go to for most users, although the OTF and TTF function exactly the same. Here's why the Avionic Collection is for you: You're in need of a dynamic geometric font with a variety of weights and widths for your designs You're an aviation junkie and have to have anything inspired by Air China You love the style of Bank Gothic, but really want something just a little different You are looking for a pseudo-techno style font family with versatility You just like to collect quality fonts to add to your design arsenal

The most space-saving sans serif This font saves more space than any of its kind! Slim proportions, but not “condensed” Characters which nearly touch Sparse ascenders and descenders Distinct forms How close to each other can the characters of a font get? Theoretically, as close as you want. But obviously, the words should still be legible. And as any designer knows, body clearance of characters also depends on other parameters such as point size and line spacing. In practice, there are always situations in which as much information as possible has to be positioned in as little space as possible. The ingoFont ÉconoSans is made for exactly this purpose. Even the name of the font implies its function: French for the infinitive “to save” is “économiser.” Now if that doesn’t sound good… The shapes of the upper and lower case letters are completely matter-of-fact, the way a modern font has got to be. The letters c e, and s are wide open to their neighbors. An especially distinguished trait of this font is the design of the “triangular” characters v w y x k z and A V W Y Z K X M N. And the open form of B R and P is also not typical in a sans serif. The distance between letters is kept tight and often the characters nearly touch, but only nearly. With ÉconoSans you gain approximately 20% more text in a line than with »Tahoma«, and even still more than 10% compared to »Helvetica«. ÉconoSans also includes tabular figures as well as ligatures. Among the ligatures, the double mm is especially unusual and is hardly familiar, but can contribute greatly to saving space without catching the reader’s eye.

Aure Zeritha emotes the unassuming charm of fairytale romance. The modestly adorned forms of this decorative serif font engage the reader with a subtext of innocence. Zeritha brings an ingenuous romance to text and titles and a guileless promise of adventure to astrological expressions and chartwheels. The breadth of typographic textures revealed in its bold and italic forms is given depth by the charm of its small-caps and the delight of its curly alternates. Zeritha is an original design developed by Aurora Isaac, first released in the LP glyphset in 2011. After more than a decade in development, 2018 marks the release of the CJ and KB glyphsets, available in regular, italic, bold, and bold-italic. The CJ glyphset is a full text font supporting a variety of European languages. A matching set of small-caps complements the extended lowercase and uppercase glyphsets. Supporting glyphs include standard ligatures, four variations of the ampersand, and check-mark and happy-face with their companions x-mark and grumpy-face. Numbers are available in lining, oldstyle, and small versions, with numerators and denominators for forming fractions. Companion glyphs include Roman numerals, specialized glyphs for indicating ordinals, and a variety of mathematical symbols and operators. The CJ glyphset also includes an extended set of glyphs for typesetting Western Astrology. These glyphs are also available separately in the KB glyphset: a symbol font re-coded to allow easy keyboard access for the most commonly used glyphs. Aure Zeritha stands its own as a text font, but for extended text, try pairing Zeritha with its distant cousin, Aure Declare. Use Zeritha where the fairytale romance is needed; use Declare for tight text and practical contrast. Give Aure Zeritha a trial run! You may discover a permanent place for this font family in your typographic palette. AureFontDesign.com

While it is obvious that this is an ornamental style font, it is more than that: it is a Celtic Knotwork design tool! Irish, Scottish, Welsh, even Norse and Viking cultures have used knotwork designs for millenia. These ancient traditional interwoven designs are experiencing a revival as Celtic culture gains exposure in the modern world. Intricate Celtic knots are featured everywhere from jewelry to tattoos. While many enjoy them simply for their beauty and fascinating twists, they can also be used to add an air of myth, magic and mystery to any project. The interlaced lines make them perfect for wedding invitations, borders, dividers and rules, web graphics, and logos. I began using Celtic knotwork designs in my own work as part of my knifemaking and jewelry making hobbies. I read all of the books I could find about Celtic knots and at first I drew them by hand with pencil and paper. Then as I realized how nice it would be to have "undos" I switched over to using Corel Draw. Draw proved to be a natural for this type of artwork with tools like contour and the trim function. But even with these great tools, it was still tedious to create these designs. I noticed that I was able to reuse a lot of parts in repetitive sections. I developed a small library of reusable bits and chunks of Celtic designs. I found them so useful and fun to work with that I began thinking about ways to market my Celtic design kit. I thought about CDR and EPS formats, but then I thought of creating this toolset as a True Type Font. That way anyone with ANY program that uses fonts could easily create Celtic knotwork designs. Word processors, embroidery programs, engraving programs, jewelry design programs, CAD/CAM programs...almost every program can use fonts. I was also interested in CNC work and thought that this font would work well for applications such as laser etching, vinyl signs, and machining. With that in mind, I designed each character of the font with extremes of accuracy. If one character from the font is used at one inch tall, every control point will be placed to an accuracy of better than 0.0001 inch. I wanted every piece to meet exactly with the next, with no possibility for misalignment. The different styles are all very carefully created to fit accurately with each other. So the Filled Style fits exactly into the Outline Style, and the Inverse Style fits precisely around the Outline Style so as to make up the background behind the knotwork. Combining the styles allows you to have complete creative control. By assembling the nearly 200 pieces it is quite easy to produce very complex designs. It is actually a bit like playing with a puzzle and many people really enjoy putting the pieces together to make designs. In fact, I have had many customers tell me of how they love playing with this font and making knots into the wee hours of morning. If you like puzzles then you will absolutely love this font! And creating the patterns is just the beginning of the fun! If you apply your favorite Photoshop tricks on them you can make anything from dazzling chrome knotwork to carved stone. Photoshop plug-ins like SuperBladePro are great for converting knotwork text into corroded bronze or rusted iron. Use your knotwork to add texture to a virtual landscape, or add them as surface embelishments on architecture and furniture. You can also make round knotwork by using this font with "WordArt" (WordArt is included with every copy of Microsoft Word. See http://clanbadge.com/round_knots.htm for a tutorial on how to make round knotwork). For Crafters there are limitless uses for this font. It has been used for embroidery, jewelry, leatherwork, stencils, stained glass, quilting, painting, pyrography, woodcarving and lots more. We have even sold copies to monks for use in decorating handmade books!

Pargrid is a grid-based typographic experiment from the young Swiss designer Michael Parson. In the Pargrid family, which contains three separate weights, Parson has created an intriguing system of small circles-similar to LED's or light bulbs-that live separately on a grid, creating unique letterforms. In small sizes, these circles blend together to create seemingly fluid lines, giving Pargrid's letters a wide, rectangular appearance. In larger sizes, the letterforms transform themselves into objects d'art-virtual and ordered communities populated by various points. Fantastic in both display settings as well as short strings of text, Pargrid may offer the exact look that your next project is looking for. Pargrid and nine other constructed type designs from Parson are included in Take Type 5 collection, from Linotype GmbH."

Meet Wiblz (say “Vibbles!”). Wiblz is a Modern/Didone text family in the great tradition of squarish text families like Walbaum, Ibis, and Georgia. He has a high x-height and a great balance of legibility and readability. Plus, he supports the Latin alphabet, basic Cyrillic, Monotonic and Polytonic Greek, and the International Phonetic Alphabet. That makes him superlative in his usefulness and versatility! When searching for a didone typeface, it's often a struggle between blackness/legibility and stylishness/contrast. this is especially true of squarish didones, which number less than their round counterparts. Wiblz is an excellent balance between the two — clean and striking, good for uses from text to heading, and at home in print and on screen. Give him a try! He's a smart, adaptable, useful guy!

I became interested in designing Bodoni Classic because of a lazy graphic designer at Jacques Damase publishing house. He had to change a single letter on a bookcover about J. B. BODONI. The French call him Jean Baptiste instead of Giambattista! And that unknown graphic designer just took any old “J” from some newly cut Bodoni. All the new Bodoni cuts have square serifs, whereas the originals had rounded serifs and slightly concave feet. The single letter “J” with the squared off serif was for me like a road sign to start redesigning the entire Bodoni family. That’s exactly what I started in 1993 and a dozen years later I am finished. Okay, I am still adding new Bodoni Classics, but those are my personal additions. Yours very retro, Gert Wiescher

Campeche variable is an expressive yet functional typeface family. Seeking to express its beauty, it twists the conventions of classic typography when necessary. Campeche finds its inspiration in the grotesque typefaces of the late 19th century coupled with a typical Latin American playful sense that gives it a modern freshness. The initial form arises from the idea of expanding Seriguela, evolving along the way, becoming its own system with a unique personality. Campeche is designed according to today's visual requirements. Taking advantage of variable technology in 3 axes: width, weight and display. Campeche Variable is a typeface that provides versatility for almost any use. It can be used for packaging, editorial, branding... etc. The mixture of its possibilities can generate complex graphic parts or systems with different levels of hierarchy, without losing unity.

I became interested in designing Bodoni Classic because of a lazy graphic designer at Jacques Damase publishing house. He had to change a single letter on a bookcover about J. B. BODONI. The French call him Jean Baptiste instead of Giambattista! And that unknown graphic designer just took any old “J” from some newly cut Bodoni. All the new Bodoni cuts have square serifs, whereas the originals had rounded serifs and slightly concave feet. The single letter “J” with the squared off serif was for me like a road sign to start redesigning the entire Bodoni family. That’s exactly what I started in 1993 and a dozen years later I am finished. Okay, I am still adding new Bodoni Classics, but those are my personal additions. Yours very retro, Gert Wiescher

Base & Bloom is an experimental (but relatively organic) fusion of geometric monoline sans and high-contrast flourish didone. It was inspired by the lack of curious modern display sans as opposed to the uprise of contemporary serifs past couple of years. The idea was to incorporate flourishes not as unnecessary elements like swashes, but as a part of letter structure, which was an especially interesting task considering it was not a serif, which potentially could give more room for that. And after all, the idea pays off by generating many inventive letterform solutions. Base & Bloom has alternates for each letter (up to 11) so you can make endless combinations to find the perfect look. It is a bold choice for posters, album covers, identity and packaging, headlines, oversize typography, and editorial design.

Excelsor Script is inspired by lithographically produced scripts. It is softer and simpler than, for example, engraved Splendid Script, because its designer used pens and lithographic needles. The graver for steel is held in a quite different way and this has an influence on the shape of the letter. Similar type faces were in use from Neo-Classicism until the beginning of Art Nouveau, when they were pushed aside by a completely different view of festive typography. It has, in contradistinction to other scripts, slightly narrowed letters, which signifies a distinctive elegance without wasting space on the line. For practical reasons it was not possible to encircle the bottle with too long a label. It is, therefore, a suitable type face for labels. Its two optical grades cover a wide range of sizes.

Loft is a typeface family of extremes: from the extra compressed Hairline to the extra wide Mammoth. Paris-based designer Julien Janiszewski’s aim was to create a type family based on a strict hierarchy — a suite that would provide graphic designers with a tool to create systematic solutions. Its design was inspired by 19th-century wood type as well as the sign saying “DÉFENSE D'AFFICHER” (Post No Bills) that is ubiquitous in France. Loft comes in seven weights with matching italics. Interestingly, counter widths remain the same across all weights. As weights increase, the characters extend by building stroke thickness outside the counter. Loft is space-efficient in lighter weights while making an increasingly stronger statement as the designs become heavier. The Loft typeface family is distinctive, versatile, and always intriguing.

Scriptissimo is, as the name says, very much of a script! It is in the best American tradition. A script that could have served for writing the Constitution with, if only they would have had computers at that time. Scriptissimo consists of three different scripts that are meant to be used together. One is the script with the more or less plain characters. Two is the version for characters to start a word with. Three is the cut that has the characters for the end of a word. Ligatures is used for, well, ligatures and some glyphs like Ltd., GmbH, and so on. Scriptissimo is a very elegant and versatile script. It can be used for chocolate bars as well as stock certificates. I really enjoyed designing it. Yours scriptissimo, Gert Wiescher

KAPITAL is an elegant, geometric uppercase sans. It is available in standard and stencil style across four weights – light | regular | medium | demi – covering 346 glyphs. It is based on the capital character set from a previous release – Basik. Continuing the clean, geometric aesthetics, KAPITAL was refined further to create a more minimal style. This enabled the characters to discreetly perform their role – to simply convey the message of the writer without distraction. To achieve this, special attention was applied to the form consistency of the glyphs across the weights and negative space throughout. In many typefaces as the weight is increased the form and style can deviate significantly from the original design. With regards to negative space – although inevitable – wherever possible key letterforms were adjusted to alleviate this.

ITC Ironwork is the work of Serge Pichii, who was inspired by a piece of decorative lettering done by Jan Tschichold in the early 1920s. Tschichold had interlocked a series of rough sans serif letters and embellished them with scattered decorative elements. The original was of only capital letters, touching and overlapping like an ironwork gate made of letters. Pichii completed the typeface with lowercase forms and smoothed the edges. The scrolls of the capitals were extended to the lowercase and Pichii based them on iron scrollwork he found in Vienna and Prague. A lot of attention was paid to the elements of the typeface in order to 'smooth out' and balance proportional relations between the elements," says Pichii. ITC Ironwork is great for signage and display but also works well in short texts."

I became interested in designing Bodoni Classic because of a lazy graphic designer at Jacques Damase publishing house. He had to change a single letter on a bookcover about J. B. BODONI. The French call him Jean Baptiste instead of Giambattista! And that unknown graphic designer just took any old “J” from some newly cut Bodoni. All the new Bodoni cuts have square serifs, whereas the originals had rounded serifs and slightly concave feet. The single letter “J” with the squared off serif was for me like a road sign to start redesigning the entire Bodoni family. That’s exactly what I started in 1993 and a dozen years later I am finished. Okay, I am still adding new Bodoni Classics, but those are my personal additions. Yours very retro, Gert Wiescher

ITC Cyberkugel is the work of British designer Timothy Donaldson, who occasionally likes to write with an extra-fine ballpoint pen. I like the spindly scrawny forms that it gives me when I follow all the usual 'italic' writing conventions", he says. And there lie the origins of ITC Cyberkugel, although the creative process was moved from pen and paper to software and a Wacom tablet. "I like the fact that people will be buying it to give them a 'human', 'organic', 'non-digital' look, and yet no ink has soiled paper. Although the movements of the hand are still the essence, the whole thing was created in cyberspace." The name comes from combining cyberspace and Kugelschreiber, the German word for ballpoint pen. ITC Cyberkugel is a fresh interpretation of traditional calligraphy."

Yotta was created for situations where a thin sans with a little extra style is required in branding, advertising promotional projects — it is especially suited for the FASHION retail industry. The extended stroke feature (in u/c B,DP,R and l/c a,b,dg,h,m,npq,u,y) is discreetly applied so it does not dominate. I guess “quasi-serif” might be a way to describe Yotta. “Yotta Thin” and “Yotta Thin Italic” is a friendly Opentype and ready for you to unleash your creativity! btw. Yotta is big, very big: the name comes from YottaByte, as in Megabyte (one million bytes), Gigabyte (one billion (109)Terabyte (one million million (1012), Petabyte (a million gigabytes), Exabyte one quintillion (1018), Zettabyte one sextillion (1021), & Yottabyte (one septillion (1024)

I became interested in designing Bodoni Classic because of a lazy graphic designer at Jacques Damase publishing house. He had to change a single letter on a bookcover about J. B. BODONI. The French call him Jean Baptiste instead of Giambattista! And that unknown graphic designer just took any old “J” from some newly cut Bodoni. All the new Bodoni cuts have square serifs, whereas the originals had rounded serifs and slightly concave feet. The single letter “J” with the squared off serif was for me like a road sign to start redesigning the entire Bodoni family. That’s exactly what I started in 1993 and a dozen years later I am finished. Okay, I am still adding new Bodoni Classics, but those are my personal additions. Yours very retro, Gert Wiescher

Millie is a stressed, geometric script who spends her days as industrial lettering and her nights paired with blackletter on the patches of motorcycle gangs. Millie was weighted by the conventions of broad nib calligraphy, inspired by the Milwaukee Tools logo, and finds herself best used in logos and titles. She was designed to be used on about a 20 degree angle, though she looks just fine on a level plane. By using opentype, many ligatures, and two sets of stylistic alternates, Millie was developed to look great with any string of letters. Access the first stylistic set for a disconnected script look, and the second set for even more connections and fluid script than standard. Millie Round takes the edge off a bit, giving the entire set a more approachable and versatile feel.

2015 First Prize TipoType award. Neftali is a type family designed for continuous reading in long texts & editorial design, created as an interpretation of Pablo Neruda’s “Poema 20”. This work delivers a subtle experimentation of Baroque and Roman styles, rescuing features from some of the most successful chilean typefaces such as “Australis”, “Berenjena” and “Biblioteca”, along with its particular calligraphic details, medium weights, accentuated strokes, and wide curves that seek to project Pablo Neruda’s particular way of reciting. This typeface contains uppercase, lowercase, small caps, oldstyle, and tabular numbers; in addition to a true italic for every weight; and calligraphic details designed to compose his poems. A typography to talk about everything, except love… (Special thanks to: Francisco Gálvez & Patricio Truenos; without the help of the latter, this project wouldn’t have had an ending)

DF Pigtail is the result of a curious marriage of the 'free'-form of writing with the fixed (mono) space for each character of the typewriter typeface. In the early sixties of the last century, typewriter typography became popular as a Fluxus vocabulary. The Fluxus art movement (in fact a Dada like follow up) which encouraged a do it yourself aesthetic, and valued simplicity over complexity and anti commercialism over the conventional market-driven approach. I was educated in the mid seventies when this form of typography was still very popular and was even applied in corporate design. This particular letter has been used by my teacher Jan Begeer to compose his design assignments. Recently I rediscovered this type and was struck by its pigtail similarity and drew it my way.

In 2011, while tutoring an exercise on Slab Serifs, Josema discovered Robert Thorne’s work for Thorowgood. Specifically, he was fascinated by the extraordinary density of the 6-line Egyptian Pica from 1820-21. As a simple exercise, he wanted to test the limits of readability within the context of a contemporary alphabet. Rothwood Ultra is the result of this experiment. As a way of developing the series, he found it interesting to go to the opposite end of the spectrum and discover how to evolve the extra-black Ultra’s DNA into a super lightweight model. The Hairline and Thin styles are her slim sisters. The third challenge has been the creation of the text version. Light, Book, DemiBold and Bold, including italics and Small Caps close the Rothwood cycle for editorial use.

The Pergamon series is a creation of Alfons Schneider (1890–1946) and was issued by the foundry of Ludwig Wagner in Leipzig in 1937/1940, though the website of the Klingspor-Museum says that several of the faces were probably produced after the death of Schneider. This digital version is extended with the necessary OT characters and signs, while also the “символы кириллицы” are added. Also, in addition to the members of the family designed by Schneider, regular, italic, bold and bold italic extended versions were produced. The specimens of Ludwig Wagner stated emphatically: “In allen Graden werden beide K K geliefert”, so these two forms are in all the faces, while the two condensed members also have k k, as the specimens said that this alternative character was also in these two faces.

Australian designer and art director Wayne Thompson has loved typography “ever since I received a battered second-hand Letraset catalog at the age of 10.” He based ITC Django on the handwriting of an acquaintance -- “a fellow I know who writes and illustrates children's books and is also a commercial artist” -- who called himself Django, after the jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. “I felt that that name Django suited the funky, lively feel of the face,” says Thompson. But he adds, “Django has a split personality: it appears loose and easy at first, but after looking at it for some time I felt an edginess come through that was slightly psychotic.” The looseness of the lowercase contrasts with the spikiness of the capitals. The “edginess” is especially apparent in words in all caps.

Gia is 7 weights, true small caps and unicase options, designed after iconic letterforms of the 1960’s to 1980’s. In the early years of the American tech revolution, when Silicon Valley was more closely identified with Dallas, Texas, a curious type of letterform began to appear—strict in geometry, and curiously minimal in geometry and stroke, making it easier to be read by machine-readers, and people more used to reading machine-generated typography. Coders! As the years went on, this kind of sinewy, curved letterform began popping up in logotypes and music videos and upright video games: NASA, The Buggles, Atari, Pong, Sega, Namco, Stern, Devo, Apple. Gia pays homage to that letterform, and is named after Gia Carangi, the iconic face of early 1980’s pop fashion.

Electrostatic JNL was inspired by the 1930s lettering for radio station WMCA in New York City. It was found as part of an ad for the station in a 1932 radio broadcasting trade magazine. WMCA went on the air Feb. 6, 1925. According to Wikipedia, the "MCA" call letters stood for the Hotel McAlpin, where the station's original studio and transmitter were located. "W" is the call sign prefix for all broadcast stations East of the Mississippi River; with the exception of KDKA (Pittsburgh), which was the nation's first commercial radio station. This bold novelty typeface with lightning bolds intersecting the characters can be used to represent anything from electricity to stormy days; power generators to brute force and so forth. Electrostatic JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

This delicate condensed typeface evokes a distant 1930s style with its pointed and sloping capital letters. The splayed capital M gives the design a very a definite retro flavor. But deco quickly becomes modern day with the use of slab serifs. The thick body of Kingsbury Condensed is neatly anchored to long thin serifs giving the face an unusual and at the same time contemporary appearance. Great for book covers and large capital letter assignments where a modern revivalist look is appropriate. Kingsbury Condensed Book is also available in the OpenType Std format. Some new characters have been added to this OpenType version. Advanced features currently work in Adobe Creative Suite InDesign, Creative Suite Illustrator, and Quark XPress 7. Check for OpenType advanced feature support in other applications as it gradually becomes available with upgrades.

How should an authentic baudelairean type look like? Aesthetically beautiful, that’s for sure. Intellectual, neurotic. Uptight — oh, the conventions of the time. Easily readable — still 20 years to go until the age of art nouveau with its outrage of typefaces. It may have a vibe of a Paris salon - salute to the Parnassiens. Such a modern-class (don’t mix it with the modern-styled) pharmaceutical Antiqua. Contrasts, thin serifs, the integrity of the operating theatre. But Baudelaire is not Heredia. «Une charogne» is not that much a vivid metaphor as a drawing from nature. The baudelairean typeface should have its cavern, flow, dark side. Not to demonstrate the fragile romantic profile of a cursed poet, as Baudelaire was seen 130 years ago, but to express the real pain. A true, unattractive, egoistic, suicidal passion.