Style and elegance in 14 styles PS Fournier, created by Stéphane Elbaz, is designed in tribute to Pierre Simon Fournier. Fournier was the prolific Parisian type designer whose work is best known for its iconic representation of French transitional style. PS Fournier elegantly represents the transition to the modern era of typography. Featuring three optical sizes, PS Fournier is designed to perform in any context. The Pierre Simon Fournier heritage Pierre Simon Fournier (1712—1768) was a leading innovative type designer of the mid-18th century. Early in his career, the young Pierre Simon developed a strong aesthetic that he cultivated throughout his life. His art is representative of the pre-revolutionary “Age of Enlightenment” (Siècle des Lumières). Precursor of the Modern style, Fournier’s body of work deeply influenced his times, and created the fertile ground from which the Didot family and Giambattista Bodoni developed their own styles. During the historical period of the 18th century, Fournier exemplified the intellectual pursuits of the times with his own research on type, documenting in detail the typefounding process. He also offered a unique vision: he is the first to clearly comprehend the concept of “type family,” sorting a set of similarly styled alphabets by sizes, width, and by x-heights. In addition, Fournier is one of the earliest advocates of the point system to organize the practice of typography, the point system that contemporary typographers continue to use to this day. The refined and discreet elegance of PS Fournier With a close look at the family, one finds you’ll find that the difference between the optical sizes (Petit, standard and Grand) is more than a contrast variation between the thin and the thick; the eye can also denote a palette of distinct tones: More streamlined and robust in the smaller sizes (Petit), more refined and detailed in the larger sizes (Grand). The PS Fournier standard family is designed to adapt to any situation with its intermediate optical size, from body copy to headlines. With a bit of tracking, PS Fournier Petit will make the smallest captions perfectly readable. However, Petit family is not limited to body and captions — its “slabby robustness” will make a relevant headline choice as well. PS Fournier Grand presents a higher contrast adapted to large text sizes, displays or banners. Its refined elegance makes it a perfect choice for Design, Fashion or Luxury publications. As a “modern” type PS Fournier Grand features a larger x-height than the preexistent old style typefaces such as Garamond or Jenson. These proportions provide any basic text set in PS Fournier Grand a strong typographic texture. As a result, the PS Fournier global family is a versatile alternative to the Modern typefaces commonly used in the publishing industry. The optical sizes, the large range of weights, and the design variations make this family adaptable to captions, paragraphs, and pages, as well as to large texts and displays. A leading-edge typography in the 18th century In the spirit of modernity, Pierre Simon Fournier did not find any use for the conventional swashes still produced by peers such as Caslon or Baskerville. Nevertheless the French designer created many inventive elements to decorate the page and set delightful variations in the text itself. To this regard PS Fournier includes a large set of glyphs variations, ligatures and more than one hundred glyphs for borders, rules and ornaments or — as called in French — “vignettes.” PS Fournier: A tribute to the French modern typography era by Stéphane Elbaz

Burgues Script is an ode to the late 19th century American calligrapher Louis Madarasz, whose legendary pen has inspired schools of penmanship for over 100 years. His talent has caused some people to call him “the most skillful penman the world has ever known.” I use the word ‘ode’ in a colloquially ambitious manner. If I was an actual poet, my words would be about things I desire but cannot attain, objects of utter beauty that make me wallow in humility, or people of enormous talent who look down at me from the clouds of genius. But I don’t write poems. My work consists of letters drawn to fit together, that become an element of someone’s visual poetry. I am the poet’s assistant, so to speak. Once in a while, the assistant persists on what the subject of the poem will be. And occasionally, the poet gives in to the persistence. I hope you, visual poet, find my persistence justified in this case. The two main sources for Burgues were the calligraphy examples shown in Zaner Bloser’s The Secret of the Skill of Madarasz: His Philosophy and Penmanship Masterpieces, and C. W. Jones’s Lessons in Advanced Engraver’s Script Penmanship by L. Madarasz. These two references were the cornerstone for the concept I was trying to work with. I did have to change many of the letters in order to be able to produce digital calligraphy that can flow flexibly and offered the user a variety of options, while maintaining its attractive appearance. To this end, many ligatures and swashes were made, as well as full flourished sets of letters for use at the beginnings or endings of words and sentences. All of this has been tied together with OpenType and tested thoroughly within today’s standard design and desktop publishing software. After working with digital scripts for so long, at one point I thought that Burgues Script would become a bit of a chore to complete. I also thought that, like with most other scripts, the process would regularize itself after a while and be reduced to a mechanical habit. Surprisingly, and fortunately for me, this did not happen. The past holds as many surprises as the future. Madarasz’s method of penmanship was fascinating and challenging to translate into the strict, mathematically oriented language of the computer. It seems that the extremely high contrast of the forms, coupled with the required flow and connectivity of such lettering, will always be hard work for any visual artist to produce, even with the aide of a powerful machine. I can only imagine what steady nerves and discipline Madarasz must have had to be able to produce fully flourished and sublimely connected words and sentences on a whim. When I think of Madarasz producing a flourished calligraphic logotype in a few seconds, and try to reconcile that with the timelines of my or my colleagues’ work in identity and packaging design, the mind reels. Such blinding talent from over a hundred years ago. Burgues is the Spanish word for Bourgeois. In the end, I hope Burgues Script will serve you well when a flourished word or sentence is required for a design project. One of the wonders of the computer age is the ability to visually conjure up the past, serving both the present and the future. With Burgues, you have a piece of “the most skillful penman the world has ever known,” at your service. Burgues received important awards such as a Certificate of Excellence TDC2 2008 and a Certificate of Excellence at the Bienal Tipos Latinos 2008.

Helvetica’s 50-year anniversary celebrations in 2007 were overwhelming and contagious. We saw the movie. Twice. We bought the shirts and the buttons. We dug out the homage books and re-read the hate articles. We mourned the fading non-color of an old black shirt proudly exclaiming that “HELVETICA IS NOT AN ADOBE FONT”. We took part in long conversations discussing the merits of the Swiss classic, that most sacred of typographic dreamboats, outlasting its builder and tenants to go on alone and saturate the world with the fundamental truth of its perfect logarithm. We swooned again over its subtleties (“Ah, that mermaid of an R!”). We rehashed decades-old debates about “Hakzidenz,” “improvement in mind” and “less is more.” We dutifully cursed every single one of Helvetica’s knockoffs. We breathed deeply and closed our eyes on perfect Shakti Gawain-style visualizations of David Carson hack'n'slashing Arial — using a Swiss Army knife, no less — with all the infernal post-brutality of his creative disturbance and disturbed creativity. We then sailed without hesitation into the absurdities of analyzing Helvetica’s role in globalization and upcoming world blandness (China beware! Helvetica will invade you as silently and transparently as a sheet of rice paper!). And at the end of a perfect celebratory day, we positively affirmed à la Shakti, and solemnly whispered the energy of our affirmation unto the universal mind: “We appreciate Helvetica for getting us this far. We are now ready for release and await the arrival of the next head snatcher.” The great hype of Swisspalooza '07 prompted a look at Max Miedinger, the designer of Neue Haas Grotesk (later renamed to Helvetica). Surprisingly, what little biographical information available about Miedinger indicates that he was a typography consultant and type sales rep for the Haas foundry until 1956, after which time he was a freelance graphic designer — rather than the full-time type designer most Helvetica enthusiasts presume him to have been. It was under that freelance capacity that he was commissioned to design the regular and bold weights of Neue Haas Grotesk typeface. His role in designing Helvetica was never really trumpeted until long after the typeface attained global popularity. And, again surprisingly, Miedinger designed two more typefaces that seem to have been lost to the dust of film type history. One is called Pro Arte (1954), a very condensed Playbill-like slab serif that is similar to many of its genre. The other, made in 1964, is much more interesting. Its original name was Horizontal. Here it is, lest it becomes a Haas-been, presented to you in digital form by Canada Type under the name of its original designer, Miedinger, the Helvetica King. The original film face was a simple set of bold, panoramically wide caps and figures that give off a first impression of being an ultra wide Gothic incarnation of Microgramma. Upon a second look, they are clearly more than that. This face is a quirky, very non-Akzidental take on the vernacular, mostly an exercise in geometric modularity, but also includes some unconventional solutions to typical problems (like thinning the midline strokes across the board to minimize clogging in three-storey forms). This digital version introduces four new weights, ranging from Thin to Medium, alongside the bold original. The Miedinger package comes in all popular font formats, and supports Western, Central and Eastern European languages, as well as Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish and Celtic/Welsh. A few counter-less alternates are included in the fonts.

The story of Freigeist is a journey into the past, back to the early grotesk fonts and long before Helvetica and Co were standard fonts in operating systems. For what we take for granted today is the result of innovation and pioneering spirit of type foundries such as Caslon or Stephenson Blake in the 19th century, whose expressive designs are mostly forgotten today. The Freigeist family captures this untamed spirit — hence the name (German for “free spirit”) — and puts it into a contemporary context, resulting in a multi-faceted family with a wide range of applications, font styles and features for modern typesetting. Design Details Unlike other modern grotesk typefaces like Helvetica or Univers, Freigeist is characterized by a warm and dynamic appearance. It draws inspiration from various historical models such as Caslon’s Doric or the Grotesque variants of Stephenson Blake. Particularly noticeable are the narrow terminals, the serpentine S or the dynamic g in combination with ascenders that reach to the cap-height only. Italics Many italic grotesk fonts are strongly oriented towards their upright counterparts. Unfortunately, this often means that they cannot do justice to their actual task, which is to highlight words or sections of a text. The italic cuts of Freigeist try to remedy this situation by using the greatest possible formal distance while reinforcing the untamed spirit. What adds to this, is a reminiscent of handwritten forms, which can be found in a, n, y or g, as well as the German sharp s or the ampersand. Alternate Characters Alternative letterforms are ideal for customizing the overall appearance of a text, for usage in logos or they can even work as custom fonts for companies. Freigeist comes with ten stylistic alternatives that are easy to insert via the Opentype window, such as the single-storey a, a tail-less version of the a for compact text, when uses in condensed widths or a dialed down version of the r. Languages Freigeist has a built-in support for Latin and Cyrillic based languages and covers more than 210 languages. Opentype Features and Symbols The family comes with many opentype features to support modern typesetting. This includes ligatures, different number sets or alternative shapes for texts set in all caps. Styles Freigeist is available in five widths (XCon, Con, Normal, Wide, XWide) and six weights (Thin, Light, Regular, Medium, Bold, Black). Including the accompanying italics, the family comes in 60 cuts that are suitable for any application. Testfonts If you like to test the fonts before buying the full version, please follow the link below: https://www.renebieder.com/test-fonts Update 1 A lot has changed in this first update. It is more than just a 1.01 or 1.02. It is actually the 2.0! I’ve gone through all! single glyphs of the 18 master files, making the family more sharp and even a bit more modern. I’ve added some new opentype features and redesigned the italics, because I wasn’t happy enough with the result. I’ve added new kerning pairs, new metrics, and even new glyphs. Please check my website for more details on the new design and overview about the opentype features and alternate shapes. If you purchased the Freigeist family already, thanks a lot!! It is the most advanced family that I published so far. I hope that you’re happy with this new version. Thanks!