Whassup y’all! Me and my bros got this li’l gang together: we is Ringo, and we got da bling, yo! We is da typeface family for ya all! We got some real sweet stuff for ya, some nice characters. We got all ’em OpenType features like fractions and proportional figgers, we even got da cubic root, man! And check out da question mark, man, is real sweet. And the ampersand, yeah! I luv ’em ampersands. Now my brothers over here got some light action for ya, and they got some real bold action for ya. We got some nice foxy curves goin’ on, some nice tension, and some nice relaxation. My bro Light over here is kind of like the subtle guy, ya know. He’s in for the female fans, ya know. Heh! Hell, yeah! And man, we speak like 84 languages: we speak the German, and the French, and the Spanish, and we speak the Polish, and the Czech, and the Hungarian, and we even speak Shambala and Swahili and Rundi, and we got some Esperanto thing as well for ya. And check out my bro Black right over here, he’s like the action superhero, man! He’s got impact, man! Yeah yeah, but you know, my bros Regular and Bold are the real deal. Them is like da word of da street, man! Like da word of you, and you. And we got a message for y’all: life is hard, life is real, but you should work your mojo, be smooth, be nice, chill. We got all them kerning pairs, and all them weights, and we got ’em alternate letters. So check us out, yo!

Maged, a traditional-style Arabic text face, enjoyed widespread popularity as a dry-transfer typeface prior to being licensed by Letera Arabica to Linotype-Hell for font production. In consultation with the Linotype Design Studio (U.K.), the artwork was redrawn by Adrian Williams to render the typeface into a complete, unitized Arabic font with a full complement of traditional-style ligatures suitable for digitization. Maged, which has two weights, first appeared as a 202 font in 1987 before its eventual conversion to OpenType in 2005. Thus Linotype’s Maged font can be described as a trend-setting modern Naskh design that retains a sense of the fluidity of Naskh calligraphy: the letters, when composed, appear as freshly-written text characterized by rich, inky horizontals, tapering swash strokes and contrasting delicate ascenders. The Bold exploits these features of the Regular without excess, tempered by the need for clarity at smaller sizes. Maged Regular and Bold are eminently suited to text and titling in broader column work (brochures, magazines, advertising, coffee-table books etc.) and are thus able to extend the range of the Linotype Arabic library in areas of work where the more compact text and titling fonts would create a too concentrated effect. Both of the Maged fonts include Latin glyphs (from Palatino Medium and Palatino Black) inside the font files, allowing a single font to set text in both most Western European and Arabic languages. Maged incorporates the Basic Latin character set and the Arabic character set, which supports Arabic, Persian, and Urdu. They include tabular and proportional Arabic, Persian, and Urdu numerals, as well as a set of tabular European (Latin) numerals.

‘Thwaites’ typeface is fully dedicated to one of my best Canadian friends who I do cherish and value highly. This great and industrious Canadian friend is ‘James Douglas Thwaites’ who lives along with his good-natured family in British Columbia, Canada. For me, James is like a source of inspiration and I do consider him as an ideal in my life. Our strong friendship has started since 1999 and I hope that it will endure just to the last moment of my life. Sometimes I see him as the writer and poet that I learn a lot from, sometimes I see him as a devoted religious minister that I try to understand more about his teachings, and other times I see him as the educator that I strive to imitate verbatim in my life. When I want to talk more about this Canadian friend, I will not be able to give him his due in full. Thus, I will instead mention some excerpts of his biography that he wrote himself saying that: “James D. Thwaites is a self-accomplished man. Having worked in various fields including restaurant management and cleaning, he has achieved his goals of being a full-time teacher, past-time writer, and volunteer religious minister for the Christian Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses. His personal and academic pursuits have led him to be published in various magazines, newspapers, self-published books, and websites, including his now defunct ‘poetryofthemonth.com’ website. He continues to learn and augment the craft of writing while working primarily in early literacy and delayed literacy learners, teaching reading and literature to a wide age range of students. He views his religious endeavors as an extension of his academic ones. He teaches others both as a public speaker and in one-on-one situations, teaching about the benefits of submission to God and to His teachings. His future goals include expanding his ministry and continuing his writing.” The name ‘Thwaites’ itself comes from Great Britain and originated from the last Viking raids upon England, being an Anglicized version of a Scandinavian term meaning—depending on the source material—either "a place that is difficult to approach" or "a small thicket of trees." Another recitation mentions that ‘Thwaites’ can be described also as an English surname but one of pre 7th century Norse-Viking origins. It may be either topographical or locational, and is derived from the word "thveit", meaning a clearing or farm. As a locational surname it originates from any one of the various places called "Thwaite", found in several parts of Northern England and East Anglia to the south. The various modern spelling forms include Thwaite, Thwaites, Thwaytes, Thoytes, Twaite, Twatt, Twaites, Tweats and Twite. The name, although often appearing unique to outsiders, can often be found within other famous names like Braithwaite, Goldthwaites, or Misslethwaites. With various spellings, some families not including the ‘e’ or the ‘s’ at the end, Thwaites and its derivations—although not exceedingly common—is a name found worldwide. ‘Thwaites’ typeface is simply a sans-serif streamlined, stylish, and versatile font. It is designed using a combination of thick and thin strokes for its +585 characters. Its character set supports nearly most of the Central, Eastern, and Western European languages using Latin scripts including the Irish language. The typeface is appropriate for any type of typographic and graphic designs in web, print, and other media. It is also absolutely preferable to be used in the wide fields related to publication, press, services, and production industries. It can create a very impressive impact when used in headlines, posters, titles, products’ surfaces, logos, medical packages, product and corporate branding, and also signage. It has also both of lining and old-style numerals which makes it more suitable for any printing or designing purposes. ‘Thwaites’ typeface is really the cannot-miss choice for anyone who wants to possess unique artistic and modern designs produced using this streamlined typeface.

I spend a lot of time following two obsessions: packaging and hand lettering. Alongside a few other minor obsessions, those two have been my major ones for so many years now, I've finally reached the point where I can actually claim them as “obsessions” without getting a dramatic reaction from the little voice in the back of my head. When you spend so much time researching and studying a subject, you become very focused, directionally and objectively. But of course some of the research material you run into turns out to be tangential to whatever your focus happens to be at the time, so you absorb what you can from it, then shelf it — like the celebrity bobblehead that amused you for a while, but is now an almost invisible ornament eating dust and feathers somewhere in your environment. And just like the bobblehead may fall off the shelf one day to remind you of its existence, some of my lettering research material unveiled itself in my head one day for no particular reason. Hand lettering is now mostly perceived as an American art. Someone with my historical knowledge about lettering may be snooty enough to go as far as pointing out the British origins of almost everything American, including lettering — but for the most part, the contemporary perspective associates great lettering with America. The same perspective also associates blackletter, gothics and sans serifs with Germany. So you can imagine my simultaneous surprise and impatience when, in my research for one of my American lettering-based fonts, I ran into a German lettering book from 1953, by an artist called Bentele. It was no use for me because it didn't propel my focus at that particular time, but a few months ago I was marveling at what we take for granted — the sky is blue, blackletter is German, lettering is American — and found myself flipping through the pages of that book again. The lettering in that book is upbeat and casual sign making stuff, but it has a slightly strange and youthful experimentation at its heart. I suppose I find it strange because it deviates a lot from the American stuff I'm used to working with for so long now. To make a long story short, what’s inside that German book served as the semilla, which is Spanish for seed, for the typeface you see all over these pages. With Semilla, my normal routine went out the window. My life for a while was all Bezier all the time. No special analog or digital brushes or pens were used in drawing these forms. They're the product of a true Bezier process, all starting with a point creating a curve to another point, which draws a curve to another point, and so on. It’s a very time-consuming process, but at the end I am satisfied that it can get to pretty much the same results easier and more traditional methods accomplish. And as usual with my fonts, the OpenType is plenty and a lot of fun. Experimenting with substitution and automation is still a great pleasure for me. It is the OpenType that always saves me from the seemingly endless work hours every type designer must inevitably have to face at one point in his career. The artful photos used in this booklet are by French photographer and designer Stéphane Giner. He is very deserving of your patronage, so please keep an eye out for his marvelous work. I hope you like Semilla and enjoy using it. I have a feeling that it marks a transition to a more curious and flexible period in my career, but only time will tell.

“More is better” may have been the motto of Richard Austin of Austin and Son’s Imperial Letter-Foundry on Worship Street at Finsbury Square in London when he designed and cut his Antique typeface. The year it was created is uncertain, but it is known to have appeared in a specimen book produced in 1827. At first glance, the upper case letters of Austin Antique look very much like Figgins Antique. But, upon examination, one will note that the Austin face is much darker. In general, the letters designed and cut by Richard Austin have fatter strokes, larger serifs and smaller counters -- more metal and less daylight. The premise was that the darker the letter, the more attention an ad using the typeface would receive. In old pictures of London and Paris one may see walls crowded with posters and “bills” -- competing for the attention of the passerby. Morris and Updike aside, the early nineteenth century marked the beginning of a commercial as well as industrial revolution. Patterns of commerce were changing. With new methods of marketing came the need for new typefaces to support the new methods. Foundries found the display types were very profitable and competed most energetically and creatively for the trade. There was a lot of trial-and-error. Some ideas faded away. Others, like the Antiques or Egyptians, were refined and developed. From them came the Clarendons that were to prove both popular and long lasting -- because they worked. Their job was to sell goods, not please the aesthetic sensibilities of the critics. They did their job well. Austin Antique has a full Western European character set, plus the following ligatures: ct, st, fi, fl, ff, ffi and ffl. Tabular numbers. Surprisingly readable.

Gryffensee is designed to be the Futura of blackletter, combining the time-honored gravity and relentlessness of the Gothic script with the clean, contemporary freshness of the geometric sans. Built from a tightly controlled inventory of lines, arcs, sharp cuts, and OpenType features, Gryffensee was born and raised in the digital age, yet retains the powerful charisma and human warmth of its mediaeval blackletter ancestors. As a result, it excels in a wide range of display settings, logotypes, and short text. Unlike most conventional blackletters, it even handles all-caps usage with grace, and includes an extensive Cyrillic character set (in the Pro version). Apart from a generous range of automatic ligatures and contextual alternates, Gryffensee offers stylistic alternates that allow users to customize its appearance to their tastes. The capital letters |AGHIKZ| come in alternate cuts that trade traditional shapes for increased legibility, while the letter |s| appears in three cuts, each with a unique, distinct flavor. All these options are accessible through OpenType stylistic sets in the main Latin font, Gryffensee Eins. For easy use in applications without OpenType support, we provide two additional Latin fonts (Gryffensee Zwei and Drei) in which these options replace the default cuts. Finally, Gryffensee Pro offers all the functionality of Gryffensee Eins, plus Cyrillic support. My intention to devise a contemporary geometric blackletter was inspired by four hand-painted letters, |ABCD|, in Sasha Prood�s online portfolio. I later found out that he had, in turn, taken those letters from an existing font, Bastard, by Jonathan Barnbrook. Luckily, by that time my project had taken on a life of its own. Gryffensee is an original design that bears only the most superficial resemblance to Bastard. Gryffensee is a mediaeval spelling of the lake Greifensee near which I grew up. It is pronounced [?gri?f?n?se?], or "GRIEF-un-say" in English approximation. This font is dedicated to Simone.

Picture this: the smell of freshly-grilled shiitake mushroom burgers wafting through the air, the sound of sizzling plant-based steaks on the grill, and a cold drink in your hand. It’s barbecue season, and you want your message to sizzle just as much as your food. Enter Charbroiled, the scorched and antiqued typeface that will take your design to the next level. Inspired by the classic American Italic from 1902, Charbroiled has a rustic and natural design that will add panache to any message. But Charbroiled isn’t just any old font. Custom letter pairings are automatically swapped to achieve a more genuine look, giving your design that extra edge. With its bold and distinctive style, Charbroiled will make your message stand out in any setting. So fire up the grill, crack open a cold one, and let Charbroiled do the talking. Whether it’s for a barbecue invitation, a restaurant menu, or a summer sale flyer, Charbroiled will give your message the perfect touch of authenticity and style. Get your message across with Charbroiled, and make your design sizzle! 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.

Fruitygreen is Indonesian designer Andi AW. Masry's second typeface following Coomeec™. Idiosyncratic but appealing forms are the signature feature of Fruitygreen™ and provide this new typeface with its truly distinctive character that you can utilize for your projects - and not just in headlines. The unique forms of fruits are not only individually fascinating, but are just as captivating when they are brought together, for example as decoration on a dining table. For Masry, these can be compared with an alphabet whose letters spell out in combination different words and with this as his inspiration, he based his designs for Fruitygreen on the versatile forms of fruits. However, it was not the whole fruits as such but rather small sections of their curves and ends that he decided to use. It is not only because of the characteristic line terminals that the rounded characters of Fruitygreen seem at first glance reminiscent of a brush-written calligraphic typeface; these are traces of the creation process, in which Masry used a digital brush. At the same time, Fruitygreen is by no means simply a brush font. Its dynamic characters reference biological forms and there is definitely something amoeba-like about them, particularly in the bolder variants, and they exude the same serenity and harmony that is inherent to organic structures. The many unconventionally shaped characters also provide for optical contrast. There is, for example, the very scaled down g", the open "q" and the lowercase "r", which has the form of the capital letter. Other letters, such as the sinuous "k" and the rounded uppercase "F" impart an exotic touch to Fruitygreen. Similarly remarkable is the "@", that has only a semi-circle. Available to the designer are other characters that can be used to accentuate a design, such as swash capitals and numerous ligatures. And, last but not least, there are also various numeral sets with oldstyle and lining figures for setting proportional text and table columns together with a selection of symbols, such as arrows and, appropriately, fruits. "

Lettres d’amour! Flirting, fashionable, provocative, emotional, casual, moderate, extremely sensible & beautiful - Liza Pro covers it all. Liza Pro, Underware’s dear creation, is a live-script typeface. Thanks to its extremely intelligent OpenType architecture, she approaches human hand lettering as closely as technically possible. Liza Pro deeply analyzes the text. Out of a stock of 4000 hand crafted characters, Liza creates the most optimal combination. All of this works automatically. All you need to do is start typing your lettres d’amour, and Liza makes the text always look different. She gives your creative piece the impression par excellence. Erotique mais intelligent. She is as clever as we could imagine. She kept all folks at Underware busy for a couple of years. It all started one rainy night back in May 2004 but quickly changed into a fatal affair exceptionnelle. But now, 5 years later we are quite sure: this is something serious. Yes, we are talking about real love. L’amour pour la vie. Liza Pro has Underware’s world-dominating Latin Plus character set, supporting a total of 219 languages (Latin 1 + 2 and beyond). Liza Pro is a package of 4 fonts which work together. Liza Display Pro rocks the script lettering to the max. The build-in Out-of-ink feature, LetterSwapper and Protoshaper makes this font a realtime-digital-calligrapher. She’ll swash up your text drastically, giving long strokes, loops and swashes to letters if their context allows. Liza Text Pro has a more silent, moderate character - she’s well behaving sister of Liza Display Pro, designed to walk long pieces of text in a lively script style. Liza Caps Pro adds more possibilities and functionality to these two script fonts. It bridges the gap in case running script lettering doesn’t do the job, but it also works perfectly on its own. Every capital letter appears in various shapes to obtain the manual lettering feeling. Liza Ornaments Pro is for extra delicatesse et est plus charme. Four heart winning fonts, pour la langue l’amour!