Rolphie can be your go-to sans-serif, with 16 easy-to-read weights and 10 versions for each weight, and the subtlety of choice that represents. The versions contained in each weight are: Regular; Condensed; Half-Condensed; Expanded; Small Capitals: and their italic counterparts. (At heavier weights particularly it seemed to be justified to have two Condensed versions). Plus there's 20 funky versions with the letters all shook up (that would make a good title for a song), or jumbled around, plus some Shadow, Doubled-Up, College, and other FX versions. In total there's 180 variations, giving a comprehensive selection of both standard and funky fonts, and that subtle degree of choice of weight. To make things easier, the weights are put in ascending numerical order from 01 to 16, and the FX versions have been stuck in the 80s and 90s, (like two musicians I know). There are grouped packages available for certain weights (which have 10 fonts in them) and the complete family package (180 fonts) which represent better value than the individual fonts, and there's a basic package containing the Normal and Italic versions of all 16 weights (32 fonts). A limit of 5 sub-family packages has been imposed, unfortunately, which precludes a more comprehensive selection. To let you know what's in the font that you might otherwise never know about . . . With Discretionary Ligatures on, you get special characters if you type Mc St. Rd. Bd. Ave. c/o No. (p) (P) - include the full-stop/period. With Stylistic Alternates switched on, you get plenty of extra characters - including a WiFi symbol (type Wifi or WiFi) / bullet numbers instead of ordinary numbers / that different U-dieresis / special characters for c/o No. Mc / an upside down ~ / a huge bullet, and different forms for cent, dollar, percent, per-thousand. As you'd expect, there's all the accented characters for all Western European scripts using Latin letters, and standard ligatures, plus other Open Type features including Class Kerning, Slashed-Zero, Historical Forms, Sub- and Superscript numbers, fractions for halves, thirds and quarters, Ornamental forms giving bullet numbers, etc. There's also the main mathematical operators, symbols like card-suits and male/female signs and so on, and some more obscure stuff like schwa and O-horn, U-horn - and there's lots more if you can Access All Alternates. Much will depend on what your software recognises. The Small Caps versions have (intentionally) lost the ligatures for lower case ff, fi, fj, fl, fr, fu, ffi, ffj, ffl, ffr, ffu. The names for the weights are not absolute - we had to make up some names to make them stretch out to sixteen - so rather - see them as relative to each other, being in ascending numerical order by weight.

A gentle breeze caressed his face as his body took on the easy posture of a dancer on break. Flickering sparklets of light sprinkled the glass-smooth surface of the aqua liquid on which he floated. His mind wandered; he was only days away from his scheduled departure date. This day was no different from a hundred other days he had spent melded to his windsurfer, skittering along the breadth of the modest lake, soaking up the sun's rays and forgetting about the entire rest of the world. Lake Quannapowitt, and the town of Wakefield, Massachusetts, were familiar to Steve, a long-time resident of the picturesque New England town. This is where he grew up; this is where he married and lived for many years; and this is the place he was preparing to leave, not one week hence. Not generally prone to nostalgia, it was in just such a state he nonetheless found himself once Zephyrus retreated, as was his custom, periodically, while patrolling the resplendent lake. Steve was going to miss the lake, and he was going to miss the town. How many hours of how many days had he spent exactly like this, standing on his motionless board, waiting for his sail to fill, and staring at the lake's shores, its tiny beach, the town Common with its carefully maintained greenery, and equally well-tended gazebo, the Center church - its spire shadow piercing the water's edge, like a scissor-cut the better to begin a full-fabric tear? Yes, he was going to miss this place - this town which all of a sudden had become a place out of time, just as he was about to become a person out of place. Once this idea struck him, he couldn't shake it. He was transported back in time four score years, now watching his ancestors walk along the shore. Nothing in view belied this belief - not the church's century old architecture, not the gazebo frozen in time, nor the timeless sands of the beach, nor the unchanging Common. Everything belonged exactly where it was, and where it always would be. This, he decided, was how he would remember his hometown. And this is when it occurred to Steve to design a typeface that would evoke these images and musings - a typeface with an old-fashioned look, reflected in high crossbars, an x-height small in size relative to its uppercase, and an intangible quality reminiscent of small-town quaintness. Wakefield, the typeface, was born on Lake Quannapowitt in the town for which it was named, shortly before Steve moved away. It is at once a tribute to his birthplace and a keepsake.