Ten years or so after his unique treatment of Garalde design with Trump Mediaeval, Georg Trump took on the transitional genre with Mauritius, which was to be his last typeface. He started working on it in 1965. The Stuttgart-based Weber foundry published a pamphlet previewing it under the name Barock-Antiqua in 1967, then announced the availability of the metal types (a roman, a bold and an italic) a year later. The global printing industry was already in third gear with cold type technology, so there weren't that many takers, and Weber closed its doors after more than 140 years in business. Subsequently, Trump’s swan song was unfairly overlooked by typography historians and practitioners. It never made it to film technology or scalable fonts. Thus, one of the most original text faces ever made, done by one of the most influential German type designers of the 20th century, was buried under decades of multiple technology shifts and fading records. The metal cuts of Mauritius seem to have been rushed in Weber’s desperation to stay afloat. So the only impressions left of the metal type, the sole records remaining of this design, show substantial problems. Some can be attributed to technological limitations, but some issues in colour, precision and fitting are also quite apparent, particularly in Mauritius Kursiv, the italic metal cut. This digital version is the result of obsessing over a great designer’s final type design effort, and trying to understand the reasons behind its vanishing from typography’s collective mind. While that understanding remains for the most part elusive, the creative and technical work done on these fonts produced very concrete results. All the apparent issues in the metal types were resolved, the design was expanded into a larger family of three weights and two widths, and plenty of 21st century bells and whistles were added. For the full background story, design analysis, details, features, specimens and print tests, consult the PDF available in the Gallery section of this page.

Acarau is a 6 fonts display typeface with high reverse contrast—since from Roman capitals and calligraphy, usually Latin alphabet letters have thiner horizontal steams and thicker verticals, these features being optical or visual—quite adequate for logos, headlines and posters. Moreover, the style of the typeface is inspired by Italics form factor: lowercase letters having less strokes to make their shapes; A has one story; E has one stroke shape, such as K, G, Y and Z; F has a descent. To give it more calligraphic feeling, there is contrast for uppercases as well, this is very perceived by the diagonal letters like A, K, M, N, V, W, X, Y and Z. J also has a descent. Q and R have natural swashes, but they have alternates in case the costumer want to go for more usual forms—including accent marked letters. Acarau is a 12 months project, the contrast for uppercases were increasing as the process was made. In the middle it is found suitable blend the letter shapes with the history of Brazilian music from the 70’s and 80’s, since the font has a tropical, warm, spicy and nostalgic feeling. Songs from bands and singers that emerged on Rio de Janeiro like Paralamas do Sucesso, Cazuza, Lulu Santos and Kid Abelha bring the beach accent and rhythm that this font has. OpenType features complement the set, which has Multi-Lingual support for a comprehensive Latin set, including Vietnamese—meaning more than 640 glyphs: Case-Sensitive forms, so symbols can properly align to uppercase letters; Ligatures, to better reading for z_y and L_I, and style for s_s, w_w_w; also for ease arrows and punctuation typing; Stylistic Set 1: two story a—including accent marked letters; Stylistic Set 2: two story g—including accent marked letters; Stylistic Set 3: diagonal (usual) z—including accent marked letters; Stylistic Set 4: flower i and j dots; Contextual alternates; Terminal forms, for R and Q; Ordinals.

The Masqualero™ family is a versatile solution for a deep and broad range of applications. In large sizes, the heavier designs are dark and handsome, while the lighter weights are charming and friendly in text copy. Thanks to its many variations and distinctive demeanor, both print and interactive designers will find that Masqualero expands their creative options, while setting the perfect tone to catch and hold readers’ attention. It’s About the Design Like the legendary jazz song of the same name, Masqualero is haunting and sophisticated. Drawn as a tribute to Miles Davis, its letterforms are as beautiful as his “Masqualero” composition. “I approached drawing the letters as if they were marble sculptures,” Says Jim Ford about his typeface. “Many sharp, black, modern sculptures filling a large park. All of them created with the same qualities – the flair of Miles' electric funk and rock sounds, the sparkly smooth finish and serifs like trumpet bells, the sweet lyricism and the tone and clarity of Miles’ horn.” What’s Available With six weights and italics, in addition to Stencil and Groove display designs, Masqualero is available as a suite of OpenType Pro fonts, providing for the automatic insertion of small caps, ligatures and alternate characters. Pro fonts also offer an extended character set supporting most Central European and many Eastern European languages. Thoughts About Use A book or album cover set in the Masqualero design sends a message: what’s inside is of value. Like jazz, the Masqualero typeface takes ordinary basic concepts and slips them into something special. Readers take notice and immediately recognize that what they’re viewing is a cut above – and radiates quality. “I see Masqualero as a luxurious typeface for exquisite typography,” says Ford. “I wouldn’t use it to sell toys or hot dogs. Masqualero sells diamonds, boats, real estate and champagne.” Perfect Pairings Antique Olive™ Neue Kabel® Neue Frutiger® Quire Sans™ Trade Gothic®

Originally conceived while sketching outline typefaces for a client, Minotte Pro has blossomed into a font one thousand glyphs strong and is chock full of alternates and contextual swashes! By enabling swashes, style sets, and contextual alternates in your OpenType savvy application, headlines and text set with Minotte Pro will transform into unique combinations of initial, middle and final swash forms! There’s also an alternate Cap set with a partial fill for even greater variety! Perfect for travel ad headlines, Minotte Pro adds a light, carefree touch. If your app doesn't support OpenType, then check out the split out versions, Minotte, Minotte Swash, Minotte Fil and Minotte Swash Fil. Minotte Pro Minotte Solid Pro contain these OpenType features: Contextual Swashes, Stylistic Alternates, Standard & Discretionary Ligatures, 6 Style Sets, Superiors & Inferiors, Fractions and Ornaments. The Minotte Extras Pro Pak includes three chromatic effects fonts, Minotte Center, Minotte Gradient and Minotte Shadow. These Extras fonts are intended to be used with Minotte Pro and Minotte Solid Pro, allowing colorizing and 3-D shadow effects. There are numerous combinations when using all three together! The three Extras fonts support the entire Pro character set and all OpenType features! Intended for users that do not own or use OpenType savvy apps, the four alternative fonts capture the best of the Pro version and will provide you with the glyphs needed to duplicate some of Minotte Pro’s typographic richness. Minotte and Minotte Fil are fully usable, whereas the Minotte Swash and Minotte Swash Fil are intended to work in tandem with the basic Minotte fonts. Set your headlines and text in Minotte, then switch to Minotte Swash and manually select the appropriate swash glyphs. Switch to either of the Fil fonts for full sets of Cap alternates sporting a partial fill. Minotte Pro, Minotte, Minotte Fil, Minotte Swash and Minotte Swash Fil support an extended European character set.

Futura is the fully developed prototype of the twentieth century Geometric Sanserif. The form is ancient, Greek capitals being inscribed by the Cretans twenty-five hundred years ago at the time of Pythagoras in the Gortyn Code, by the Imperial Romans, notably in the tomb of the Scipios, by classical revival architects in eighteenth century London, which formed the basis for Caslon’s first sanserif typeface in 1817. Some aspects of the Geometric sanserif survived in the flood of Gothics that followed, particularly in the work of Vincent Figgins. In 1927, stimulated by the Bauhaus experiments in geometric form and the Ludwig & Mayer typeface Erbar, Paul Renner sketched a set of Bauhaus forms; working from these, the professional letter design office at Bauer reinvented the sanserif based on strokes of even weight, perfect circles and isosceles triangles and brought the Universal Alphabet and Erbar to their definitive typographic form. Futura became the most popular sanserif of the middle years of the twentieth century. Ironically, given its generic past, Futura is the only typeface to have been granted registration under copyright as an original work of art, and, further irony, given the key part played by the Bauer letter design office, the full copyright belongs to Renner and his heirs. This decision in a Frankfurt court implies that a further small group of older typefaces may also be covered by copyright in Germany, particularly those designed for Stempel by Hermann Zapf. This situation appears to be limited to this small group of faces in this one country, although protection of designers’ rights in newer typefaces is now possible in France and Germany through legislation deriving from the 1973 Vienna Treaty for the protection of typefaces. Mergenthaler’s Spartan is a close copy of Futura; Ludlow’s Tempo is less close. Functional yet friendly, logical yet not overintellectual, German yet anti-Nazi... with hindsight the choice of Futura as Volkswagen’s ad font since the 1960s looks inevitable.

In the history of 20th century graphic arts, the evolution of the informal sans serif has been a uniquely American phenomenon. The ongoing saga of this (still as popular as ever) sub-genre dates back to the maturity of the Industrial Age and early Hollywood film titling, runs through the prosperous times of interwar print publications, sees mass flourishing during the various media propagations of the film type era, and solidifies itself as arguably the most common design element in the latter years of the century. Fun, bouncy, playful, and highly exciting, the casual sans serif is now all over game packaging, film and animation titles, book covers, food boxes, concert posters, and pretty much everywhere design aims to induce excitement about a product or an event. The casual sans is the natural high pill of typesetting. We figured it was high time for the casual sans to adapt to 21st century technology, gain more versatility, and become as much fun to use as the emotions it triggers. So we’re quite excited to issue Bananas, a fun sans serif family in 6 weights and 3 widths that can be used anywhere your designer’s imagination can take you. Rather than being based on a single design, Bananas was sourced from multiple American film era faces, all from 1950s and 1960s, when the casual sans genre was at its popular peak. Headliners’ Catalina and its very similar cousin, Letter Graphics’ Carmel, served as initial study points. Then a few Dave West designs informed the design development and weighting process, before narrow and wide takes were sketched out and included in the family. The entire development process happened in a highly precise interpolative environment. All Bananas fonts come with a full glyph complement supporting the majority of Latin languages, as well as five sets of figures, automatic fractions, quite a few ligatures, biform/unicase shapes and other stylistic alternates.

Joachim Müller-Lancé's Uppercut is a rather sporting fellow, originally developed for the Krav Maga training center of San Francisco (Krav Maga is a simple and efficient self-defense system that has become equally popular in Hollywood and with law enforcement). Joachim has spent several years training, hitting things and people whenever he needs a break from kerning. Uppercut can be seen on the school's t-shirts and other articles. Despite bearing the same moniker as an upwards punch to the chin, the name actually fell together quite naturally as Uppercut is an all uppercase typeface, and the word "cut" is also historically used to describe a type style in hot metal type. For this slanted look, "Angle" felt just right (with thanks to Mia McHatton). The design idea sprang from pencil sketches for the center's new identity. Uppercut's shapes are not calligraphic or handwritten, more like lettering seen in comics or sports logos. Its brush movements are imaginary, not too literally brushy. During development, details were simplified and reduced until a bit of a cut-paper feel emerged, but more fluid like writing. The shapes are economical and efficient; simplicity makes the font versatile, holding up in small as well as big sizes. Uppercut is decidedly analog, muscular but not bulky, with the fluid but determined movements of a boxer or martial artist - not theatrical but powerful, fast, confident and dynamic. Well... it has punch. In the proportions, there is emphasis on a strong upper edge "keeping its guard up", while several stems protrude downward, giving the impression of leaping or being "light on the feet". Use Uppercut to pick up the pace, add snap, verve and drive - on movie posters for action and adventure, to advertise your dojo, rumble or prizefight, racing team or tuning shop, or invite friends to your barbecue with old time rock'n'roll and homemade hot pepper sauce.

Kangaroo FS Joey was the offspring of a project with Rudd Studio to develop a logotype for an online streaming TV service, in 2008. While under wraps, the secret project was code-named Kangaroo. The logotype led to a second project, to design a corporate typeface for the service. It was the first big project Fernando Mello had worked on with Jason Smith. “Like any designer who just joined a team, I was very excited about it, drawing and sketching lots of ideas. I remember Jason and I experimenting with lots of possibilities, for both the logo and the typeface.” Online As the font for a Spotify-style, internet-based service, FS Joey needed to be highly legible on-screen, including at very small sizes. There had to be a range of weights, and they’d have to work well in print, too. It was also important that it felt corporate, not too quirky, while still having a strong character of its own. Quirkiest “We designed three weights specifically for use on the Web,” says Jason Smith. “There was the usual fight between me and my team. I wanted at least one identifiable letter that was a quirk. As always I went straight for the lowercase ‘g’, and it was drawn numerous times with lots of variation. I got the quirkiest one accepted by the client.” But, later in 2009, the Competition Commission blocked Project Kangaroo, and Fontsmith were left with a couple of weights of an as yet unused font. From Kangaroo, Joey was born. A favourite “Straight away, people started to notice the typeface,” says Jason. “I can take the credit for pushing the art direction and standing up for the quirks. But it was Fernando who was the key to pulling it all together and adding his own distinct flavour. Now it’s one of my favourite designs in our library.” Fresh and friendly, geometric and energetic, Joey is available in five weights, all with italics, all finely-tuned for both screen and print.

Kangaroo FS Joey was the offspring of a project with Rudd Studio to develop a logotype for an online streaming TV service, in 2008. While under wraps, the secret project was code-named Kangaroo. The logotype led to a second project, to design a corporate typeface for the service. It was the first big project Fernando Mello had worked on with Jason Smith. “Like any designer who just joined a team, I was very excited about it, drawing and sketching lots of ideas. I remember Jason and I experimenting with lots of possibilities, for both the logo and the typeface.” Online As the font for a Spotify-style, internet-based service, FS Joey needed to be highly legible on-screen, including at very small sizes. There had to be a range of weights, and they’d have to work well in print, too. It was also important that it felt corporate, not too quirky, while still having a strong character of its own. Quirkiest “We designed three weights specifically for use on the Web,” says Jason Smith. “There was the usual fight between me and my team. I wanted at least one identifiable letter that was a quirk. As always I went straight for the lowercase ‘g’, and it was drawn numerous times with lots of variation. I got the quirkiest one accepted by the client.” But, later in 2009, the Competition Commission blocked Project Kangaroo, and Fontsmith were left with a couple of weights of an as yet unused font. From Kangaroo, Joey was born. A favourite “Straight away, people started to notice the typeface,” says Jason. “I can take the credit for pushing the art direction and standing up for the quirks. But it was Fernando who was the key to pulling it all together and adding his own distinct flavour. Now it’s one of my favourite designs in our library.” Fresh and friendly, geometric and energetic, Joey is available in five weights, all with italics, all finely-tuned for both screen and print.

The classic modernist FS Alvar grew out of a library of pure modular shapes gathered by Fontsmith’s master of the abstract starting point, Mr Phil Garnham. “It was a collection that just had to be explored and brought to life in a typographic voice. “We debated long and hard about this. It was big decision to make a shift away from the typefaces that people knew us for. And we didn’t want to compromise our reputation of well crafted typographic quality”. Modular forms A headline font that’s both graphic and functional, in the modernist tradition, FS Alvar focused Fontsmith’s eyes on the bigger issue of what makes a font show its age. “Looking at those fonts from the 1980s that were supposed to represent the ‘future’,” says Phil, “they looked so dated now. With Alvar, we weren’t concerned with creating future-thinking typography but with exploring form for form’s sake, and how that can evolve to create letterforms. Modular forms with a typographic eye.” Stencilled The concept for Alvar first materialised back in 2001 with some sketches Phil made while still at Middlesex University. Eight years later, something made him dig them out again. “There was something really nice about the proportions of that first design. Working on it again, I thought about it properly, but it still needed something to give it that edge. “Jason stood up in the studio and supplied the missing link: ‘Why don’t we make it stencilled?’ He didn’t mean in an obvious way, but by building a kind of architectural stencil into the form. It worked and the idea of using an architect’s name (Alvar Aalto) to describe the font felt perfect.” Featured in... The three weights of FS Alvar are made for standout headlines in advertising campaigns and magazines. Alvar has had a starring role in campaigns for brands from Nike to Amnesty International, as well as on CD covers, record labels and packaging.

THE SPARK Uniform started as a spark of inspiration one day while I was shopping at the store. I was looking at some typography on a can of dog food and the idea popped into my head, “What if there was a geometric typeface with a circular O that when condensed, the O became straight sided, instead of becoming an oval?” I quickly sketched out the concept of Uniform and liked what I saw, the only problem was I was working full time as a graphic designer, and as a newly married husband, I didn’t have any time to make the extensive typeface. LETDOWN A year and a half later, shortly after the birth of my first child, my boss cut my hours in half. Although stressful, I saw this event as an opportunity to finally have time to complete the typeface I had in my head. I spent a couple months putting together a Kickstarter campaign, thinking it would be a smashing success, and I would be able to live off the donations long enough to complete the typeface. Wrong! The campaign was a flop and I was left discouraged and dejected, thinking that the great idea I had in my head would never become a reality... PERSEVERANCE At the end of the year, in December 2013, I decided to go for it and make this new type family no matter what it took. I began waking up a few hours before work each morning (getting only four hours of sleep each night) carefully crafting each individual glyph day by day. After nine months of hard work (and just about killing myself in the process!) in October 2014, I finally had a finished product ready to be released to the public! THE PINNACLE Fast forward a few years and now Uniform has reached it's pinnacle, Uniform Pro. Uniform Pro now offers extended language support including Cyrillic and Greek character sets, integrated italic styles, additional weights, and additional OpenType features.

PHOENICA is a contemporary humanistic typeface family suitable for traditional high-resolution print purposes, office application and multi-media use. Of the creation formed the basis an idea which was developed for the first time by Lucian Bernhard approx in 1930 with the Berhard Gotic and was taken up in the last time by different written creators repeatedly: the repeated elimination anyway (in comparison to a Antiqua, e.g. Garamond) already very much diminished form Grotesque (as for example Helvetica) by systematic leaving out of the serifs. The horizontal direction of the writing is thereby stressed remarkably by which so-called »Rail effect« originates. The eyes can grasp the line to be read very well what is ordinarily left to a Serif-stressed font. By this desired effect is suited PHOENICA also for big text amounts. In numerous test runs Stems and tracking was compared to experienced fonts and was adapted. The experienced was taken over without renouncing, nevertheless, the modern and independent character PHOENICA. PHOENICA offers to you as a welcome alternative to the contemporary humanistic Sansserif. It is a very adaptable family for text and Corporate design uses. Several companies have discovered PHOENICA meanwhile as a Corporate font for themselves and use them very successfully. She provides a respectable typeface combined with refinement and elegance. Every PHOENICA family has at least six weights in each case in regular and italic. In addition more than three fine Haarline weights (Hairline 15, 25, 35). These are a total of 27 possibilities. Phoenica as well as Phoenica Condensed are excellently readable fonts, because they were optimised especially for amount sentence. Both basic styles (Regular and Condensed) are tuned on each other and follow the same form principle. The family is neither exclusively geometrical nor is constructed humanistically, the forms were sketched on quick and light Recognition effect of every single letter. The PHOENICA family design and logo is suited for all only conceivable uses like newspapers and magazines, for the book typography and Corporate Design.

In the sketches that formed the basis for his typeface Biome, Crossgrove experimented with inner and outer shapes in different styles, adapted letters to the form of the super-ellipse, and added curves only to remove these again. His challenge was to find a harmonious and coherent approach that provided sufficient contrast with existing fonts. Biome is essentially in the sans serif tradition and the letters exhibit only minor variations in terms of line thickness. There is still a suggestion of the super-ellipse at many points, but this never becomes the predominant design factor. While most of the terminals of the vertical strokes are only slightly rounded, the horizontals and diagonals have pronounced arches and it is these that basically determine the round and soft character of the typeface. The more unconventionally shaped letters, such as the lowercase 'g' with its two semi-open counters and the 'k' and 'x' with their crossbars, provide Biome with an individual personality. And this effect is emphasized by the generously rounded links in the 'v' and 'w' and the uppercase 'M' and 'N'. Biome has been designed as a typeface super-family. From the near hairline Extra Light to the amply proportioned Ultra, there are seven clearly differentiated weights and three tracking widths. There are oblique italic versions of all variants. The range includes small caps and numeral sets containing lowercase and uppercase digits. With its available range of characters, Biome can be used to set texts in all Eastern European languages. Although the remarkable individuality of Biome is most clearly apparent in the larger point sizes, this typeface is not just suitable for producing headlines and logos. Biome's elegant visual effects mean that it is equally comfortable in short texts while its large x-height and generous counters make it readily legible even in the small font sizes. Biome is a contemporary typeface that employs mid-20th century futurist elements which ironically give it a retro feel.

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