Goth icon and Saturday Night Live voice-over talent, Nicole Blackman grew up surrounded by design; her dad and her sister are architects, her mom is a retired fashion designer and her grandfather invented clip art. “No lie, Volk Clip Art in NJ,” she says. “Herb Lubalin designed his logo!” Sharing her grandfather’s fondness for fonts, Ms. Blackman created this alphabet. Her creativity sparked this lanky lettering’s theatrical nature in all caps and its supple beauty in upper and lower cases. Final fontification and adjustments were done by Chank Diesel. Blackman drew the original art for the alphabet in 1997; the newest version of the font was completed in 2006. Enjoy this seductive and stylish hand-drawn font.

The new font “The Best We Could Do” was created by artist and author Thi Bui who used the font in the graphic novel by the same name. The font is brush-script handwriting font which displays human personality rendered with bold confident strokes full of passion and expression. Chank’s work on this font captured Bui’s distinctive textual style and also saved her a ton of headache and time in inking. A debut memoir that tells the story of one family’s journey from their war-torn home in Vietnam in the 1970s to their new lives in America, the autobiographical book is lauded for its heart-breaking exploration of identity, family, and home. Bui ties her modern life with the multi-generational experiences of her family, weaving together the emotional threads of their relationships to find clarity in her current day. “The Best We Could Do” graphic novel is published by Abrams ComicArts and is available wherever fine books are sold.

Assemblage Designed by Daniel Hernández, Alfonso García, Bruno Jara Ahumada and Luciano Vergara. Thanks to Pedro González for his contribution in the initial stage of the design process. Assemblage is a typeface-inspired by Roman square capitals-that comes in 6 different weights and ranging from Thin to Black. The background of the typeface makes it well-suited for branding, short text, titles and complex compositions, thanks to its italic version. Contrary to some conservative fonts, Assemblage includes an italic version with a look based on Elzeverian and Dutch Barroque typefaces, what gives the font an extra dash of elegance, resulting in a very enjoyable design. The family was specially created for labelling wine bottles and general packaging. Assemblage is a font collection consisting of a Sans Serif plus an Italic version of classic features. The family comes in 6 weights and includes ligatures, caps and small caps plus 3 sets of smaller small caps for different kinds of composition. The Italic version-with strong decorative features-comes with swashes. Assemblage also includes a set of dingbats, especially designed for packaging as well as for publishing or branding. The Sans contains 979 characters and the Italic version 620 characters. Assemblage supports 212 different languages and its OpenType features include ligatures, semi oldstyle figures, 3 sets of ornamental small caps (in the Sans version), swashes, ending forms and alternates in the Italic version.

Full of texture and regal personality, Bell Martellus was derived from a book published in 1475 by Henricus Martellus entitled “Liber Insularum.” The writing style is based on the Carolingian Script created by the Emperor Charlemagne and his scribe, Alquin of York, in the 9th century A.D. This old world lettering comes with new world OpenType capabilities, including swash caps and small caps. The James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota commissioned Bill Moran to develop this font as a means of introducing their amazing collection of rare books, maps and manuscripts to a wider audience. Once the historic script was fontified by Bill, it was forwarded to Chank Co, where we added some snazzy baubles for the discriminating typographer. Everybody can enjoy the antique genuine nature of Bell Martellus, but advanced OpenType users also get extra features in Adobe CS applications.

Newercastle is the new incarnation of a popular Chank font formerly known as "Newcastle". A consistent fan favorite since its initial release in 2005, the distressed blackletter font is new and improved. This sinister script is now bulked up with all-new capital letters, a bit of punctuation, and smattering of new crowns, griffins and other heraldic doodads. Designer Kevin Hayes opted for an assortment of gritty old icons instead of more traditional punctuation, because he felt that's just the way this type of font could perform best for you, the font enthusiast. "At-signs and percentile glyphs just aren't believable in fraktur-style fonts," says Kevin. You benefit by getting a bit of clip art with the new font instead of boring old punctuation. Use the new bats indiscriminately to add a regal air to even the most mundane newsletter. Or use layer upon layer to add a rustic richness to a poster project. Enjoy this wicked, textural type and use it with extreme force.

Jana Nikolic was finishing her degree program at the Faculty of Applied Arts, in Belgrade, with a final project that would combine her two majors: type and book design. Three stories from William Saroyan's My Name Is Aram would provide the text for the book, to be set in a typeface that Nikolic would design. Nikolic knew something special was happening the moment she put pen to paper. The letters just emerged," she recalls. "I started to explore a few new pens and found one I loved. I was able to make its tip bend with pressure." Like the family Saroyan writes about, the design flowing from Nikolic's pen would be simple but a little quirky. "When there were a whole bunch of little black letters around me," continues Nikolic, "I saw that this was going to be a very interesting typeface family." Nikolic drew Latin and Cyrillic letters, lowercase and capital letters, wide letters and narrow letters. She was surprised at how quickly and easily the design came. "There were no badly written letters," she says. "I hardly had to rework them and they fit together remarkably well." ITC Aram's standard character complement consists of one set of lowercase letters and two sets of capitals: one narrow and the other wide. The wide caps can be used with the standard lowercase, or mixed with the narrow caps for a variation on "cap and small cap" copy. The ITC Aram create the opportunity to mix and combine the letters into playful typographic expressions. Words and sentences that twinkle; text that seems light and alive - one runs the risk of creating work that is both delightful and charming when setting copy in ITC Aram."

“Liebelei” – dalliance, flirtation, hanky-panky; kind of diminutive of “Liebe” (German for love) The typeface Liebelei has its roots back in 1932, when Vienna-based painter Rudolf Vogl created the poster for a movie called Liebelei after the popular play by Arthur Schnitzler. Only the title letters existed of that typeface. I loved the letters from first sight and proceeded by adventurously interpreting the missing characters. The goal was to create letterforms that fit to the original from the 1930s and represent a modern multi-purpose font. It should be an easy-to-use italic font with warm and friendly details and a huge variety of alternates and languages. The characteristic curled ends of most letters provide a script touch to the Liebelei. The first font entirely designed was the bold one which corresponds to the original poster lettering, although I tweaked the proportions a tiny bit to a more contemporary shape. Liebelei covers Western, Central European, and Central Eastern European Languages and contains also complete Greek and Cyrillic character sets. Liebelei is best for poster design as well as detailed usage, for example handsome tables, since it supports small caps, different kinds of numerals and fractions.

Mutable is as flamboyant and changeable as its name suggests. These characterful fonts were designed specifically for display purposes. It’s an exuberant type family that’s jam-packed with alternates and bestowed with a loud personality. This typeface is defined by its barbed serifs and elegantly curved terminals, or “foxtails” as they are sometimes known. An extremely large x-height amplifies the friendliness and buoyancy of the lowercase glyphs. These qualities give Mutable a unique aesthetic that will undoubtedly give your logotypes, headlines, and titles a distinctive appeal. Mutable has a strong Art Nouveau influence and was mainly inspired by Ed Benguiat’s Tiffany and the mysterious Pretorian typeface accredited to P.M. Shanks and Sons of London. Special OpenType features include 523 alternates that will make each word resonate beautifully when used in titling and branding situations. With so many alternates available, you may find it difficult to stop playing and settle on a selection... but that’s a good thing, right? Small Caps are also included (along with their matching diacritics and alternates) – these are designed to harmonise with regular lowercase forms making unicase-style typography a cinch. Mutable has a total glyph count of over 2,400 characters. There are 9 weights across 2 widths, ranging from a delicate and wispy Narrow Thin to a chunky and imposing Ultra. And... it’s variable! This allows you to select any width or weight in between, making Mutable even more... erm... mutable! This type family has an extensive character set that covers all Latin European languages. Finally, you can test drive Mutable immediately as the Regular weight is offered as a free download. Key features: 9 Weights 2 Widths Variable Small Caps 500+ Alternates Old Style Figures European Language Support (Latin) 2400+ Glyphs per font

Jill Bell's typefaces are energetic, highly decorative, and refreshingly unpredictable. Some are friendly and childlike, while others are rough and nervous. Her latest creation is ITC Swank, a connected script whose shabby-chic" sophistication communicates a worn elegance. Bell begins the design process "with black stuff on white paper," she explains, preferring to draw letters before she digitizes them. Often the inspiration for her typefaces comes from a piece of hand-lettering. "Bruno began as a reminder to buy cat food," she says, "and ITC Swank started out as a small bit of lettering for Wurlitzer Pianos." Bell finds that working with blocks of lettering is a good start for script typefaces. "If I'm drawing a script typeface, I have to write out sentences in the letters first," she explains. "Drawing each letter separately doesn't establish the flow and spontaneity that scripts deserve." Bell's newest design is ITC Swank. It's a somewhat tattered formal script with definite links to early copperplate scripts. Though probably not for wedding invitations, Swank's elegant underpinnings are evident, with its slightly narrow proportions and a baseline that can best be called "bouncy." Graphic designers will appreciate the abundance of swash letters, making it easy to create distinctive headlines and short blocks of copy. Bell has a fondness for the "open, genuine" quality of Chinese and Japanese calligraphy. "Eastern styles incorporate the natural flow of the hand," she says. "Natural, human qualities shine through. Mistakes are accepted, not scorned as in the 'white-out' Western culture." This philosophy is evident in Bell's own designs. Whether it's ITC Clover 's carefree spirit, the slightly spooky Hollyweird, Caribbean 's< rustic charm or the weathered elegance of ITC Swank, there is a natural honesty in her work."

Kevin King says: "When I started this font it was called Pestle... It didn't run - it didn't even walk. At some point I thought, Hmm! Looks a bit like Liquorice! And now... Voila! I remember being able to buy about a yard of Liquorice rolled round a central comfit - how fab! Tuppence worth of sticky afternoon! You could also buy bundles of Liquorice root - which looked like black twigs with bright yellow wood - they left my teeth full of black twiggy bits... The past is a strange Lady - Bless her! This was almost Kingthings Leechy... just another one of my bulbous shiny things - I have always liked letter-shapes with 'bottom', probably a 70's thing, as many a seventies thing did indeed possess it - including the fabulous Chaka Kahn... Oooh, Diva!" ALL fonts from CheapProFonts have very extensive language support: They contain some unusual diacritic letters (some of which are contained in the Latin Extended-B Unicode block) supporting: Cornish, Filipino (Tagalog), Guarani, Luxembourgian, Malagasy, Romanian, Ulithian and Welsh. They also contain all glyphs in the Latin Extended-A Unicode block (which among others cover the Central European and Baltic areas) supporting: Afrikaans, Belarusian (Lacinka), Bosnian, Catalan, Chichewa, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Esperanto, Greenlandic, Hungarian, Kashubian, Kurdish (Kurmanji), Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Maori, Polish, Saami (Inari), Saami (North), Serbian (latin), Slovak(ian), Slovene, Sorbian (Lower), Sorbian (Upper), Turkish and Turkmen. And they of course contain all the usual "western" glyphs supporting: Albanian, Basque, Breton, Chamorro, Danish, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Frisian, Galican, German, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish (Gaelic), Italian, Northern Sotho, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romance, Sami (Lule), Sami (South), Scots (Gaelic), Spanish, Swedish, Tswana, Walloon and Yapese.

Arapix is a 12 pixel high multilingual Latin-Arabic pixel font with incredible capabilities. The Arapix is an almost traditional Naskh. It is elegant and easy to read even in very small sizes. It includes almost every feature you would expect from a high range Naskh font. Its humanistic look and feel fit perfectly to its Latin counterpart. Arapix was originally designed for a web project that didn't see the light a few years back. It started with the idea of fitting both Latin and Arabic into a 12 pixel vertical grid. The latin glyphs fit properly within the vertical limits, but when it came to the arabic glyphs, it proved to be more challenging. Arabic letters with lower diacritic dots like the (Yeh-fina) or letters with accents above like the (Alef-Hamza-above) need much more space than any Latin letter. Add to this the fact that accents needs to be positioned above and below the glyphs. It is technically impossible to fit a (Yeh-fina-kasratan) or a (Alef-Hamza-above-shadda-damma) into 12 pixels. Initially the accents were dropped and not included in the design. Although it seemed impossible at the start, Sylvain found a solution in the end, including as many contextual alternates and contextual kerning as needed to avoid every collision between letters and diacritics, letters and accents, and diacritics and accents. The contextual kerning was added to achieve an even letter and word spacing in longer text. Arapix is amazingly legible in small size on screen and in print. On the other hand, it also works perfectly as display titling font due to its unique and contemporary pixel approach. It can be used for screens with very low resolution as well as for high resolution screens and prints. The new Arapix comes with various new features and new glyphs including Persian and Urdu letters, stylistic set, old style figures, contextual kerning, contextual alternates and a few icons too. Enjoy the new Arapix and have fun with it.

Pakenham is a typeface that truly exemplifies the transformative power of typography. Inspired by the timeless elegance of Steile Futura, a work of art by the legendary Paul Renner, Pakenham has taken the world of typography by storm with its innovative and captivating design. At its core, Pakenham is a sans-serif typeface that exudes an aura of modernity and sophistication. Its gently curved corners and generously scaled loops give it an effortlessly chic and trendy look, while its clean and sharp lines keep it rooted in the world of minimalist design. But Pakenham is not just a pretty face. It is a typeface that is brimming with oddities and anomalies that will add a unique and personal touch to your creations. Its superelliptical design is unlike anything you’ve seen before, making it perfect for designers who are looking to break free from the shackles of conventionality and embrace their creative freedom. With four different weights, two widths, italics, and special effect styles, Pakenham is a typeface that offers an unprecedented level of versatility. It is a true workhorse, capable of adapting to a wide range of design projects and styles. Overall, Pakenham is a typeface that is a must-have for any serious designer. Its combination of elegance, modernity, and versatility make it a true gem in the world of typography. So if you’re looking to take your design game to the next level, look no further than Pakenham. Most Latin-based European writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aromanian, Aymara, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kurdish (Latin), Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Moldovan, Montenegrin, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Ossetian (Latin), Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Sami, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wolof, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec Zulu and Zuni.

It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that these letter shapes are familiar. They have the unmistakable color and weight of Cooper Black, Oswald Cooper's most famous typeface from 1921. What should be a surprise is that these letters are actually from George Auriol's Robur Noir (or Robur Black), published in France circa 1909 by the Peignot foundry as a bolder, solid counterpart to its popular Auriol typeface (1901). This face precedes Cooper Black by a dozen of years and a whole Great War. Cooper Black has always been a bit of a strange typographical apparition to anyone who tried to explain its original purpose, instant popularity in the 1920s, and major revival in the late 1960s. BB&S and Oswald Cooper PR aside, it is quite evident that the majority of Cooper Black's forms did not evolve from Cooper Old Style, as its originators claimed. And the claim that it collected various Art Nouveau elements is of course too ambiguous to be questioned. But when compared with Robur Noir, the "elements" in question can hardly be debated. The chronology of this "machine age" ad face in metal is amusing and stands as somewhat of a general index of post-Great War global industrial competition: - 1901: Peignot releases Auriol, based on the handwriting of George Auriol (the "quintessential Art Nouveau designer," according to Steven Heller and Louise Fili), and it becomes very popular. - 1909-1912: Peignot releases the Robur family of faces. The eight styles released are Robur Noir and its italic, a condensed version called Robur Noir Allongée (Elongated) and its italic, an outline version called Clair De Lune and its condensed/elongated, a lined/striped version called Robur Tigre, and its condensed/elongated counterpart. - 1914 to 1918: World War One uses up economies on both sides of the Atlantic, claims Georges Peignot with a bullet to the forehead, and non-war industry stalls for 4 years. - 1921: BB&S releases Cooper Black with a lot of hype to hungry publishing, manufacturing and advertising industries. - 1924: Robert Middleton releases Ludlow Black. - 1924: The Stevens Shanks foundry, the British successor to the Figgins legacy, releases its own exact copies of Robur Noir and Robur Noir Allongée, alongside a lined version called Royal Lining. - 1925: Oswald Cooper releases his Cooper Black Condensed, with similar math to Robur Noir Allongée (20% reduction in width and vectical stroke). - 1925: Monotype releases Frederick Goudy's Goudy Heavy, an "answer to Cooper Black". Type historians gravely note it as the "teacher steals from his student" scandal. Goudy Heavy Condensed follows a few years later. - 1928: Linotype releases Chauncey Griffith's Pabst Extra Bold. The condensed counterpart is released in 1931. When type production technologies changed and it was time to retool the old faces for the Typositor age, Cooper Black was a frontrunning candidate, while Robur Noir was all but erased from history. This was mostly due to its commercial revival by flourishing and media-driven music and advertising industries. By the late 1960s variations and spinoffs of Cooper Black were in every typesetting catalog. In the early- to mid-1970s, VGC, wanting to capitalize on the Art Nouveau onslaught, published an uncredited exact copy of Robur Black under the name Skylark. But that also went with the dust of history and PR when digital tech came around, and Cooper Black was once again a prime retooling candidate. The "old fellows stole all of our best ideas" indeed. So almost a hundred years after its initial fizz, Robur is here in digital form, to reclaim its rightful position as the inspiration for, and the best alternative to, Cooper Black. Given that its forms date back to the turn of the century, a time when foundry output had a closer relationship to calligraphic and humanist craft, its shapes are truer to brush strokes and much more idiosyncratic than Cooper Black in their totality's construct. Robur and Robur Italic come in all popular font formats. Language support includes Western, Central and Eastern European character sets, as well as Baltic, Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish, and Celtic/Welsh languages. A range of complementary f-ligatures and a few alternates letters are included within the fonts.