With the printing of the Futurist poem “Zang Tumb Tuuum” in 1914, modern art had taken a typographic twist: “words in freedom” (parole in libertà) were now a major part of the art world. The avant garde followed suit. Niedermann Grotesk is based on the everyday type that appeared in early modernist collages, journals and manifestos. It is a peculiar style of lettering—which was originally inspired by the Sachplakat (object poster) work of Lucian Bernhard—and adapted for hot metal in 1908 by Heinz Hoffmann. 100 years ago, the style became a workhorse of the German printing industry. Niedermann Grotesk is an updated variant, referencing the original poster art, each letter carefully drawn with an old brush. Bumpy, bold and blunt—with a suite of alternate characters and a few dingbats—Niedermann Grotesk is perfect for advertising, packaging, poetry, art, protests and retro homage.

Before the original sketches, I had imagined and dreamed this font was used for side characters of retro robot animations such as Gundam and Ideon. But the sketches were put in a PENDING folder. It was a few years ago. In the begining of 2011, I restarted working with the sketches to complete as a font file. Detail and some shape were improved retaining the original concept and they were completed, then named ‘Space Colony’. Just as the name implies, this wide and geometric font family consisting of six weights was designed targeting at use for futuristic product of game, movie, logo and so on. Not only that but the rounded shape makes a lovely, cute and soft impressions so this font is also suited for cartoons, animations and character merchandise too. We released 4 big Sci-Fi families in 2013. Check it out! Clonoid Controller Geom Graphic Space Colony

When the right late seventies / early eighties message is needed, Toisy comes to the rescue. Founded on a mix of references from letterforms of the time, this new original nods to a style that defined an era. A sexy theme font that conveys a clear image of what was truly chic thirty years ago, this alphabet is deeply rooted in sultry memories of soft, endless nights. Exaggerate contrast between strokes and angular lines combine with rounded corners to provide a unique character and a look that sharply differs when set in all caps or lower case, thanks to an uncommon treatment of density and proportions. Set it real tight, as was typographically in fashion circa 1981. Toisy and Toisy Greek include a set of 13 matching images inspired in leisure stuff and the clothing of the last days of disco. They are different from the set included with Toisy Alt.

Fans of Comicraft have made a lot of noise (HELP!) about the availability of ready-to-wear, factory surplus sound effects, not unlike those made available over a decade ago in our extremely popular and raucous ZAP PACK. It may sound impossible (WHA--?!), but Comicraft's Sonic Specialist, John JG Roshell, locked himself away (CLIK) in our top-secret SFX lab forming Onomatopoeia at high speeds (FWOOSH) and extreme temperatures (BBRRR), and sounded out over One Hundred (GASP) of the loudest (BTOOM), most intense (UNNGHH), squawkiest (KRAKK), discordant (SPLANGG), dissonant (SQUTCH) -- as well as dulcet and restrained (THWIPP) -- sound effects ever conceived (WOO HOO!) Helpfully arranged in alphabetical order (YIPPEE!), this Library of Onomatopeia -- the ONOMATOPEDIA, if you will (DING) -- is now available for use by the general public. WARNING: Comicraft Sound Effects may explode on contact with skin (AAAH!); please use protective clothing and eyewear when handling the Onomatopedia.

The Kennedy family is a completely original design, inspired by lettering discovered by George during his exploration of 16th century cartography, some years ago. The charm exhibited by these beautiful artifacts is as much reflected in the letterforms they employ as in the drawing style or content they present. After familiarizing himself with the offerings of the various printing centers of that period, George began work on a design which he called Marconova. This design continued to evolve until it began to take on the look of Dutch Oldstyle typefaces of a later period. At this point George re-christened his work-in-progress Kennedy, and added the Book, Book Italic and Small Cap companion typefaces. Only a small trace of its design ancestry is evident in the resulting typeface family. There is enough, however, to make them a unique entry in the collection of distinguished contemporary designs.

Some time ago, I started to think about the idea of combining my passionate hobby cooking with my profession as a graphic designer. While browsing through cooking books, cooking magazines and graphic publications I noticed that there were no symbols and drawings easily recognizable for interested cooks (hobby or professional). So I decided to create symbols for all the classical cooking paraphernalia still found in grand mother’s kitchen cabinet. René Menue Symbol contains 99 kitchen symbols of classical design and quality. To complement the symbols typographically, there is René Menue, a fitting linear Sans Serif typeface with plenty of extra characters such as ligatures, figures etc. René Menue is a modern, slightly condensed and economic design with round shapes, very modern but classical at the same time. These features make it perfectly usable in many different publications, not necessarily restricted to cooking… A successful cooking and enjoy your meal!

The Brass Family has a lineage that extends into English history. About five hundred years ago a devout, but anonymous Englishman gave glory to the God he worshipped by designing the capital letters and decorations of these two fonts. Originally recorded in The History Of Mediaeval Alphabets And Devices by Henry Shaw (London 1853), they are described by Alexander Nesbitt in his Decorative Alphabets And Initials (Mineola, NY 1959) as “Initials and stop ornaments from brasses in Westminster Abbey.” I wish I could say I remember seeing them when I was there, but that was forty-two years ago and all I remember was seeing the tomb of Edward the Confessor. One definition of “stop” as a noun is a point of punctuation. I have heard people from the British Isles speak of a “full stop” when referring to a period. Some may remember a 19th century form of communication called a telegram being read aloud in an old movie, with the use of the word “stop” to indicate the end of a sentence or fragment. A full dozen of these stop ornaments are provided. They occupy positions 060, 062, 094, 123, 125, 126, 135, 137, 167, 172, 177 & 190. The Brass Family consists of two fonts: Brass and Brass Too. Both fonts have an identical upper case and ornaments, but paired with different lower cases. Although the typefaces from which the lower cases were drawn are both of modern design, both are interpretations of the textura style of blackletter in use in England when the upper case and ornaments were fashioned for the Abbey. Brass is paired with Morris Gothic, which matches the color of the upper case quite well. Brass Too is paired with Wedding Regular, which is distinctly lighter than the upper case. I find it very interesting how each connects differently. The resulting fonts are unusual and most useful for evoking an historic atmosphere.

An unadorned Grotesque with a refreshingly personal touch. If “Grotesque” mainly means “industrial, mechanical, anonymous typeface” to you, Klainy might redefine your image of the genre. Yes, it’s a Grotesque—but with a contemporary look and a lot of personality. Klainy’s apertures are more closed at the top and more open at the bottom, creating an informal rhythm that sets Klainy apart: a confident, optimistic voice with a clean appearance. Terminals are subtly back-bent: these quaint “hooks” make Klainy a bit more personal, a bit friendlier. (You can find them in the a, c, f, and r.) Just like its old-style Grotesque ancestors, Klainy is optimized for display sizes and short texts. There, its unobtrusive quirks can be wholly appreciated. However, the familiar Grotesque appearance makes sure that the typeface is comfortable to read in smaller sizes, as well. Use Klainy whenever a basically classic sans-serif typeface with a modern and individual twist is called for. This font family comes in eight weights ranging from Thin to Black, each with a matching italic style. More than 500 glyphs and a bunch of Open Type Features make it a reliable companion for all of your projects. You can fine-tune the flavor of Klainy with Stylistic Alternates such as a one-story a and a two-story g. Their simple construction blends perfectly with the design concept of this typeface. Klainy is a seasoned blue-collar worker that surprises you with wit and team spirit. It’ll be a great addition to your font library.

Alf R. Becker was a noted sign painter, designer and the creator of hundreds of unique alphabets which were published in the trade magazine Signs of the Times during the 1930s through the 1950s. Thanks to Tod Swormstedt of ST Media [and who is also the curator of the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati], Jeff Levine received some reference material on Becker's work. Becker displayed many of his type styles within decorative panels—a popular trend in the days when signs were hand-lettered. Using the reference material as a guide, Jeff has re-drawn twenty-six sign panels for adaptation to digital print work. While the designs in themselves are not thoroughly unique to Alf Becker, he has left behind some tangible examples of how sign painters embellished their lettering work. With the use of complementary colors and tones, these panels—joined with vintage lettering - classically recreate the warm and attractive advertising of years ago.

Blossomy is a pictographic font consisting of 72 plant and flower illustrations, designed by kapitza. The font explores the beauty of shapes and structures in nature. The illustrations are based on photographs which have been traced by hand and are the result of a long term interest in the organic and erratic lines of naturally growing plants. The idea for Blossomy originated several years ago via a series of paintings exploring forms and structures in nature. The outlines for those paintings were traced in Illustrator and then transferred onto canvas. The outcome was so simple and beautiful that the designers decided to keep working on new illustrations and combine them in a font. Blossomy can be used as individual illustrations or to create patterns. The font covers a wide variety of flora and fauna, including pot flowers, a bonsai trees, leaves, blooms and grasses, and gives creatives a wide variety of shapes to get inspired by and use in their work.

The 10th Regiment of Foot is a British military unit raised more than three centuries ago—and perhaps most famous in the U.S. for seeing action on American soil during the Revolutionary War in the Battle of Lexington and Concord and the Battle of Bunker Hill. Military Scribe is modeled after the compact, utilitarian script on the mid- to late-1770s muster rolls of the Tenth of Foot. I incorporated the work of at least three separate scribes, merging their neat old penmanship into a legible disconnected cursive. Perhaps the most versatile of all our vintage handwriting fonts, Military Scribe might faithfully reproduce antique letters, labels, lists, or just about any document of the period. OpenType features include multiple stylistic sets, scores of historical, contextual, and discretionary ligatures (including nine terminal “d”s) lining and old-style figures, ink blots, cross-outs, and full support for Central and Eastern European alphabets—more than 1,000 glyphs in all.

I am a coffee person, but two years ago, just before the whole Covid-thing happened, I came down with what I assumed to be the flu. It was a really nasty flu as well: I was down for 10 days or so and when I sort of recovered, nothing tasted the same. Coffee tasted like cardboard and I couldn't stand the taste of it, so I decided to drink tea instead. The 'supermarket tea' we have in Holland is quite bad and tasteless, so I ordered some proper strong English tea online and I have been drinking it ever since. Of course I was thinking of this when I created Imperial Tea font. Imperial Tea font was made with... yes, you've guessed it: Chinese ink and a brush. Imperial Tea is a nice, 'oriental-ish' looking font that comes with a set of alternate glyphs and an impressive language support, including Vietnamese and Greek.

By twisting and weaving separate strands of rope together, a stronger TWINE is created. The distinctive “valleys” that give the twine its twisted and wavy appearance is the result of the twining process. Similarly, TWINE the font, is an exaggerated representation of the calligrapher’s individual pen strokes that create a cohesive character which is enhanced with the stencil. Unlike other stencils, TWINE emphasizes calligraphic strokes, so you will find it very legible even in small point sizes. Check it out! Furthermore, twine is inspired by Plantin, an old-style serif typeface named after the printer Christophe Plantin, which is based on the 16th century Gros Cicero face cut by Robert Granjon. Twine is a great choice when you need a font that is timeless, contemporary and distinctive. Perfect for Advertising, Corporate identities and Packaging design, Museum display, Technology, Hospitality, Travel, and Retail applications. Twine is available in TWINE Regular, TWINE Italic, TWINE Bold, TWINE Bold Italic. It is a Stencil that is Distinctive, Contemporary, and Timeless.

Dwiggins Uncial is based on calligraphy by William Addison Dwiggins that he created for a self-penned short story, which appeared as an insert in the book-arts publication The Dolphin in 1935. This self-described “experimental uncial” lettering features rather unusual treatments of letterforms which combine manuscript calligraphy with modern idiosyncrasies. Dwiggins Extras is a set of decorative extras features 62 stencil and woodblock motifs adapted from abstract and representational Dwiggins designs. Although Dwiggins illustrated a number of books using conventional media, he is best known for his method of illustration that uses a series of hand-cut celluloid stencils or what he called “machine ornaments.” With these stencils Dwiggins (and other designers who use his ornaments) build-up repeated motifs and patterns into abstract designs and/or representational images which have a look that is uniquely Dwiggins’ own. Unlike other illustrators, Dwiggins’ style has not been commonly imitated and therefore his style is as distinctive today as it was 70 years ago.

Reviving a handwriting style from centuries past is similar to playing antique musical instruments; the pleasure of communing with live music arranged centuries ago by brilliant composers is heightened by the use of authentic or reconstructed artifacts. A new revived" script from the Baroque epoch is the Waza typeface, developed by Polish designer Franciszek Otto. Waza is inspired by a Wilhelm Hondius (Hondt) etching. Hondius was a Dutch court engraver for the Polish king, Ladislaus IV of the Vasa dynasty. The decorative character of the script engraved in the etching is a display of Hondius's calligraphic skill. The tangle of the flourishes in the capital letters, as well as the decorative lengthening of ascenders and descenders in the lowercase, contrast ideally with the rhythmic 30-degree slant of the design. Waza includes a set of alternative capital letters that have been deprived of ornaments; these allow the setting of proper Roman numerals, e.g., Ladislaus IV."

I have just returned from a trip to Malaysia, Java and Bali with my family: my wife had some family business there, so we turned it into a holiday. The last time I visited these places was 26 years ago and I knew things would have changed, but I wasn’t prepared for the ugly truth. Malaysia’s interior has been converted into one big oil palm plantation, Java is choked in plastic and Bali is one endless string of concrete hotels, restaurants and cheap tattoo parlours. Plastic Fantastic is not an ode to the many uses of plastic. It is a wake up call: we really need to stop using disposable plastic! You can start by implementing the Plastic Fantastic font family in your durable water bottle designs, the compostable bag holding your organic potato crisps or that big ole sign advertising your local food truck event. Or whatever it is you want to create. ;-)

Giambattista is a long-time project of mine finally come to an end. After redesigning all of Giambattista Bodoni's work and then some additional cuts I started a long time ago with this Non-Bodoni Bodoni. The idea came to me while redesigning the original Chancellerosa (chancery). I thought Bodoni just didn't have the right approach to a chancery, this was just not his cup of tea! Maybe that is why he never used the Chancellerosa very much for his own printshop in Parma. So I thought someone has to design a script, that looks like Bodoni could have designed it but is more lively than his. Over the years I have been working on and off on the face and it turned out to become three typefaces which can be freely mixed. Here is my modern version of a script in the style of Giambattista, meant as an hommage, I called it Giambattista. Your modern scribe Gert Wiescher

Inspired in the world of the fast-food, my aim with Burger was to achieve a sexy slab serif font. Since it's not very common to see slabs with swashes I consider this project as an experiment with interesting results. In order to mantain an even weight on the written word, all the glyphs including the swashy ones had to look like compact blocks: This makes the font work much better used with almost no leading, as seen in posters above. Despite the formal look of its genre, this slab serif is also very playful and unique. (Maybe unhealthy food deserves better fonts already, right?) Taste Burger, come on, give it a try! On a more personal note: Why I made this font? Some months ago I started the gym and with it, an strict diet to see some results faster... Maybe my temptation is being, in Lacanian terms, "sublimated" by making delicious and unhealthy fonts.

This all started with a love for Jenson. I know there're hundreds of variations on that theme. But, that is where I began, several years ago. How far it came, as usual as I wandered through the vagaries of font design, is not unusual. If you've read any of my font design books, you know my design processes are quite loose and spontaneous. I wanted the general feel of a favorite old font, but softer, easier, and more comfortable. I built these on the same vertical metrics as my Librum Publishing Group. However, this family is not part of that group. I used the metrics because that shows my current taste in fonts. This family does work with the Librum group—but to be honest, I haven't experimented enough to come up with a good companion. I suspect I'll need to make another companion family. I may need make a non-modulated bold version also. But, that remains to be seen. I'm pleased with this.

Muller Specimen: http://bit.ly/mullers Muller Narrow Specimen: http://bit.ly/mullerns The very first sketches of Muller were made about four years ago. In the process they changed to the point where they had nothing in common with the original idea. As it is with most work we do, when we seek perfection, changes are inevitable. It was specifically designed with a wider structure for better appearance in small sizes and the extra attention to the detail was needed for the big sizes. We managed to find the right balance for the perfect universal font family. The family consists of 20 weights, ranging from Thin to Heavy with matching Italics. This font family is suited for everything, ranging from advertising, packaging, editorial and branding, to web and screen projects. Muller comes with a complete range of figure options, including proportional and old style figures, each in its tabular version. It also includes advanced typographic features such as ligatures, fractions, alternate characters, case-sensitive forms, superscripts and subscripts.

Arabetics Detroit is a monoshape font family with a fixed single shape per each Arabic Unicode character. This font family supports all Arabetic scripts covered by Unicode Standards 6.1, and the latest Arabic Supplement and Extended-A Unicode blocks, including support for Quranic texts. It includes three weights: regular, bold, and light, each of which has normal and left-slanted (Italic) versions. The design of this font family follows the Arabetics Mutamathil style design principles utilizing varying x-heights and no glyph substitutions. The Mutamathil type style was introduced by the designer more than 15 years ago. The Arabetics Detroit font family includes all required Lam-Alif ligatures in addition to all soft vowel diacritics (harakat), which are selectively positioned with most of them appearing on similar high and low levels—top left corner—to clearly distinguish them from the letters. The Tatweel or Kashida lengthening character is a zero-width glyph.

Tatty is a sans serif, monoline font that is distinguished by the gentle, rounded, backward curves on the ascenders. I created it because I had a picture in my mind of a font that I wanted to use when designing images and logos for clients' websites but I could never find one that was just exactly right. Many years ago I worked for a sign-writing company. My job was to copy and enlarge letter sets from printed copy and then cut masks for airbrushing. One morning I arrived at my desk to find that the airbrush artist had written on a rough, rubbed out, scribbled on drawing of the letter ‘a’ - “make a letter happy, make it beautiful”. That was the brief I set myself in the design of Tatty - to make every letter happy and beautiful. The result is a flowing, elegant yet simple type which I believe works particularly well for poetry.

Many years ago I studied American Sign Language in an effort to better communicate with some friends of mine within the deaf community. I found ASL to be a beautifully expressive language from a vibrant and active culture. Out of that attempt came this stylized depiction of the manual alphabet used in finger-spelling. Until recently it had only existed in analog form, born of pen and ink on paper. So now I'm glad to say it’s turned digital. Typing a period (.) will reveal the sign for “I Love You” (a combination of the letters I, L and Y), which fits nicely within the shape of a heart. Holding down the shift key while again typing period (greater symbol) will reveal the heart in its filled-in form, which can serve as an underlay. Use these in an application that supports layering in order to create different color combinations. There’s a stylistic alternate letter “S” and an “OO” ligature which can be accessed in OpenType-savvy apps.

Innova. A new grotesque for the 21st century. More open. More squarish. More legible. After the many grotesques which have been designed over the years, is it still possible to improve this genre? Innova is a new design — a contribution to the tradition of grotesque typefaces. It is an attempt to improve both this genre’s legibility and versatility. Innova consists of two families: Innova and Innova Alt. The Innova family has rectangular dots. The Innova Alt family has round dots — making its personality a little friendlier. Innova is well suited for both text and display use — for graphic design, corporate identity design, magazines, newspapers, books, reports, editorials, web, advertising, signage, etc. Innova includes 16 uprights and 16 matching italics. It includes small caps, arbitrary fractions, and extensive language support. It includes nine numerical styles: lining and oldstyle figures (proportional and tabular), small cap figures, superiors, inferiors, numerators, and denominators. Innova embodies the renewal needed for the traditional grotesques. It is a grotesque which is fit for the 21st century. In order to see whether you agree with this, please try the free Innova Alt Demi. For more information about Innova, download the PDF Specimen Manual.

Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813) was called the King of Printers; he was a prolific type designer, a masterful engraver of punches and the most widely admired printer of his time. His books and typefaces were created during the 45 years he was the director of the fine press and publishing house of the Duke of Parma in Italy. He produced the best of what are known as "modern" style types, basing them on the finest writing of his time. Modern types represented the ultimate typographic development of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They have characteristics quite different from the types that preceded them; such as extreme vertical stress, fine hairlines contrasted by bold main strokes, and very subtle, almost non-existent bracketing of sharply defined hairline serifs. Bodoni saw this style as beautiful and harmonious-the natural result of writing done with a well-cut pen, and the look was fashionable and admired. Other punchcutters, such as the Didot family (1689-1853) in France, and J. E. Walbaum (1768-1839) in Germany made their own versions of the modern faces. Even though some nineteenth century critics turned up their noses and called such types shattering and chilly, today the Bodoni moderns are seen in much the same light as they were in his own time. When used with care, the Bodoni types are both romantic and elegant, with a presence that adds tasteful sparkle to headlines and advertising. The Bauer Bodoni was done by Heinrich Jost for Bauer Typefoundry in 1927. This version has finer details of the original Bodoni types. It works well for headlines, logos, advertising.

Dederon Serif has been specifically designed for book setting. Preliminary sketches were drawn in 2004. Its inspiration – particularly its weight and width proportions – can be traced to the Liberta typeface from the TypoArt type foundry in former Eastern Germany. After a careful study of the model, the design of Dederon branched off into its own direction, finding its distinctive voice and becoming a wholly original type family. Dederon Serif kept most of the elements typical for the Old Style Roman lettering, such as the angle of the stress, the medium x-height, and lower contrast. In large sizes, the typical shapes of the letters stand out – the calligraphic feel characteristic for the Czech typefaces by Oldrich Menhart, the unusual serifs hinting at the angle of the pen, the shapes of the stems, or the terminals of dots and ears. Upon finishing the serif version, a Serif-serif variant called Dederon Serif was added. The construction principles are also derived from the Old Style Roman model, which lends the lettering its open, humanist feel. Yet the design also conforms to the rules of the modern Serif serif. Most characteristics of Dederon Serif match the serif version – the weight of individual cuts, the width proportions, x-height, ascenders' and descenders' length, and the slope of the italics. Each version of Dederon Open Type Std contains the standard Western Latin character set and the Central European characters; a number of basic and accented ligatures, small caps; old style, small caps and caps, table, fraction and superscript numerals; expert glyphs and alternative characters. This brings the total to a comfortable 820 glyphs per weight, permitting truly professional use in the most demanding projects.