Gothic Tuscan One is a all-cap condensed gothic with round terminals and decorative “tuscan” center spurs. It was first shown by William H. Page of Norwich, Connecticut among his wood type specimen pages of 1859. Gothic Tuscan One exemplifies the strength of decorative wood types: large, simple type forms that provide the visual boldness sought by advertisers of the Victorian period. While our marketing has gotten so very sophisticated, there is always a place for simple, visually strong typeface. Although about 14 miles inland, Norwich lies at the head of the Thames River. The river is both wide and deep, and therefore was not bridged in the early 20th century. From the 17th century until then, if you wanted to get from Groton on the west bank to the whaling port of New London on the east bank by land, you had to had to go by way of Norwich. Because of its size, the Thames is navigable all the way from Norwich to New London. Docks were built in Norwich around 1685 and the city became Connecticut’s 2nd largest port by 1800. With the construction of the Norwich & Worcester Railroad in 1835, Page could easily ship his wood type north by rail or south by coastal schooner. Included with our font, Gothic Tuscan One, are two 19th century printer’s ornaments of sailing ships similar to those that sailed up the Thames to Norwich. There is also a more contemporary glyph of a whale, looking quite pleased that the only whaling ship left in Connecticut is the Charles W. Morgan, permanently moored at Mystic Seaport. Reference: Moon’s Handbooks, Connecticut 2nd Edition (Emeryville CA 2004). Gothic Tuscan One ML represents a major extension of the original release, with the following changes: 1. Added glyphs for the 1250 Central Europe, the 1252 Turkish and the 1257 Baltic Code Pages. Added glyphs to complete standard 1252 Western Europe Code Page. Special glyphs relocated and assigned Unicode codepoints, some in Private Use area. Total of 332 glyphs. 2. Added OpenType GSUB layout features: pnum, ornm and dlig. 3. Added 330 kerning pairs. 4. Revised vertical metrics for improved cross-platform line spacing. 5. Redesigned mathamatical operators 6. Included of both tabular (std) & proportional numbers (optional). 7. Refined various glyph outlines. Please note that some older applications may only be able to access the Western Europe character set (approximately 221 glyphs). The zip package includes two versions of the font at no extra charge. There is an OTF version which is in Open PS (Post Script Type 1) format and a TTF version which is in Open TT (True Type)format. Use whichever works best for your applications.

Gundrada ML was inspired by the lettering on the tomb of Gundrada de Warenne. She was buried at Southover Church at Lewes, Sussex, in the south of England in 1085. The Latin inscription on her tomb, STIRPS GUNDRADA DUCUM, meaning “Gundrada, descendant of the Duke” may have led to the speculation that she was the daughter of William, Duke of Normandy and bastard son of Robert the Devil of Normandy and Arletta, daughter of a tanner in Falaise. In 1066 William defeated Harold at the Battle of Hastings and was crowned William I of England. More commonly known as William the Conquerer, he commissioned a string of forts around the kingdom and charged trusted Norman Barons to control the contentious Anglo-Saxon population. William de Warenne, husband of Gundrada, was one of these Barons. There has also been the suggestion that Gundrada may have been the daughter of William’s wife, Matilda of Flanders, by a previous marriage. According to the Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, Oxford, England 1921-22), both of these contentions are in dispute. Searching the past of a thousand years ago is like wandering in a heavy fog: facts are only dimly in view. Regardless, I know that I found these letterforms immediately engaging in their simplicity. Unadorned and unsophisticated, they have a direct honesty that rests well in the company of humanistic sans serifs like Franklin Gothic or Gill Sans, appealing to a contemporary sensibility. The lettering on the tomb is in upper case only. Although Gundrada does not sound Norman French to me, her husband certainly and her father probably were Norman French. Nonetheless, the man that carved her tombstone was probably Anglo-Saxon, like most of the people. For that reason, we are quite comfortable with a fairly generic lower case from an Anglo-Saxon document of the time. The time was a time of transition, of contending language influences. This font reflects some of that tension. Features 1. Multi-Lingual Font with 389 glyphs and 698 Kerning Pairs. 2. OpenType GSUB layout features: onum, dlig, liga, salt & hist. 3. Tabular Figures and Alternate Old-Style Figures. 4. Alternate Ruled Caps (line above and below, matching to brackets). 5. Central Europe, Western Europe, Turkish and Baltic Code Pages. 6. Additional accents for Cornish and Old Gaelic. 7. Stylistic alternates A, E, y and #. 8. Ligatures ST, Th, fi and fl. 9. Historic alternate longs. The zip package includes two versions of the font at no extra charge. There is an OTF version which is in Open PS (Post Script Type 1) format and a TTF version which is in Open TT (True Type)format. Use whichever works best for your applications.

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.

The Swiss typewriters were famous for their unique precision. As complex digitalizations and macro shots were a start for the inspiration and studies, each character has been carefully re-crafted from the ultra high def scans of the printouts made on a special bleed-proof paper. Today’s characters such as @, euro sign and most of accents have been crafted according the original alphabet design. The idea was to digitize and keep a saving of the original typewriter including all its functions (e.g. underlining key) . It’s surprisingly very legible at small sizes. Thanks to an x-height tighter and more spaced, a glyph design less detailed and more neutral/simple than other fonts found on american or italian typewriters. The final artwork can be set at very large sizes due to the highly detailed glyph design. Swissa Piccola Regular is loaded with more than 150 glyphs created with the typewriter to avoid letter repetition in a word. This OpenType feature can be accessed through the 'discretionary ligatures' option. Plus it comes with two stylistic sets : one with an original underlining feature, another with a slashed-x feature. In which all characters are unique and also have been originally typed with the typewriter. It contains more 600 glyphs in total. The two features are separated in another two fonts (Swissa Piccola Slashed x and Underlined) in case a non OT-savvy app is used. If you wish to obtain exactly the same prints as the original Swissa Piccola typewriter, you should set your font at 11.3 pt and 19.5 pt of line spacing. The Swissa Piccola font was originally offered in a dedicated limited edition packaging.

CA Normal is a typeface aiming for beauty without ostensible effects, merely relying on clarity and well balanced proportions. True beauty is not to be found in perfect geometry, so slight irregularities and inconsequences are spread throughout the typographic image. That’s perfection through imperfection. CA Normal merges influences from European grotesques and American gothics, breeding an experimental mongrel. The underlying concept stays in the background, giving the design a great self-evidence. Although it is doubtful if there can be such thing as neutrality, CA Normal comes pretty close to what people mean when speaking of a neutral font. Nevertheless it’s not faceless, anonymous or confound able. It’s just that the charm comes from subtle details rather than obvious design features. As good text typefaces must not be too smooth nor too agitated, CA Normal is smuggling little uneven details into the typographic image, that keep the readers eye awake. The well crafted oblique follows the grotesque tradition which knows no individually drawn italics. A rather unexpected addition is the reverse oblique, a style mainly used for maps. Under the classic surface lies a modern well equipped font, featuring small caps, a Central European character set and numerals in all kinds of flavors. Numerous ligatures round up the overall impression. By default CA Normal will set numbers as proportional lining figures. But if you prefer oldstyle figures, or tabular figures, just use the OpenType functions of your layout program. These allow access to the small caps as well, which feature a complete central European character set, brackets, punctuation and lining figures in small caps height.

The designer of ITC Medea , Silvio Napoleone said: “I've always had an interest in early letter shapes, particularly how they influenced modern typographic designs. While I was on vacation in Greece, I had a chance to see, first-hand, examples of early letterforms and typography. They really made an impression on me.” The idea of combining the ancient and the modern to create something new was the primary inspiration behind ITC Medea. ITC Medea is essentially a careful blending of the modern sans serif with the elegant forms of the uncial. At first glance, Medea appears to be constructed of geometric shapes. However, closer inspection reveals many calligraphic subtleties. Stroke terminals are flared slightly in characters like the 'e' and 'c.' The top curve of the 'd' is more pronounced than the bottom, and characters like the 'o' are elliptical rather than round. “I gravitated towards the simplicity and legibility of the uncial and half-uncial,” Napoleone recalls. “I thought it would make a great titling font, and I was surprised at how attractive ITC Medea looked in a body text.”

When Candy Script was officially released and in the hands of a few designers, I was in the middle of a three-week trip in North America. After returning to Buenos Aires, I found a few reactions to the font in my inbox. Alongside the congratulatory notes, flattering samples of the face in use, and the inevitable three or four “How do I use it?” emails, one interesting note asked me to consider an italic counterpart. 

I had experimented with a few different angles during the initial brainstorming of the concept but never really thought of Candy Script as an upright italic character set. A few trials confirmed to me that an italic Candy Script would be a bad idea. However, some of these trials showed conceptual promise of their own, so I decided to pursue them and see where they would go. Initially, it seemed a few changes to the Candy Script forms would work well at angles ranging from 18 to 24 degrees, but as the typeface evolved, I realized all the forms had to be modified considerably for a typeface of this style to work as both a digital font and a true emulation of real hand-lettering. Those were the pre-birth contractions of the idea for this font. I called it Sugar Pie because it has a sweet taste similar to Candy Script, mostly due to its round-to-sharp terminal concept. This in turn echoes the concept of the clean brush scripts found in the different film type processes of late 1960s and early 1970s.
 
While Candy Script’s main visual appeal counts on the loops, swashes, and stroke extensions working within a concept of casual form variation, Sugar Pie is artistically a straightforward packaging typeface. Its many ligatures and alternates are just as visually effective as Candy Script’s but in a subtler and less pronounced fashion. The alternates and ligatures in Sugar Pie offer many nice variations on the main character set. Use them to achieve the right degree of softness you desire for your design. Take a look of the How to use PDF file in our gallery section for inspiration.

One of the good practices of today’s type foundries is that they release their type families as systems including both serif and sans serif type. Usually, the sources of inspiration need to be well tried with time and practice, since production of a type family is such a laborious and complex process. From the beginning, it needs to be clear that the result will be suited for universal use. Such systems, complete with the broad, multi-lingual variations permitted by the OpenType format, have become the elementary, default instrument of visual communication. Non-Latin scripts are useful for a wide scope of academic publications, for packaging and corporate systems alike. And what about outdoor advertisement designated for markets in developing countries? Cyrillics and Greek have become an integral part of our OpenType font systems. Maybe you noticed that the sans serif cuts have richer variety of the light – black scale. This is due to the fact that sans serif families tend to be less susceptible to deformities in form, and thus they are able to retain their original character throughout the full range of weights. On the other hand, the nature of serifed, contrasted cuts does not permit such extremes without sacrificing their characteristic features. Both weights were drawn by hand, only the Medium cut has been interpolated. Anselm Ten is a unique family of four cuts, slightly strengthened and adjusted for the setting in sizes around 10 pt and smaller, as its name indicates. The ancestry of Anselm goes back to Jannon, a slightly modified Old Style Roman. I drew Serapion back in 1997, so its spirit is youthful, a bit frisky, and it is charmed by romantic, playful details. Anselm succeeds it after ten years of evolution, it is a sober, reliable laborer, immune to all eccentricities. The most significant difference between Sebastian/Serapion and Anselm is the raised x-height of lowercase, which makes it ideal for applications in extensive texts. Our goal was to create an all-round type family, equally suitable for poetry, magazines, books, posters, and information systems.

One of the good practices of today’s type foundries is that they release their type families as systems including both serif and sans serif type. Usually, the sources of inspiration need to be well tried with time and practice, since production of a type family is such a laborious and complex process. From the beginning, it needs to be clear that the result will be suited for universal use. Such systems, complete with the broad, multi-lingual variations permitted by the OpenType format, have become the elementary, default instrument of visual communication. Non-Latin scripts are useful for a wide scope of academic publications, for packaging and corporate systems alike. And what about outdoor advertisement designated for markets in developing countries? Cyrillics and Greek have become an integral part of our OpenType font systems. Maybe you noticed that the sans serif cuts have richer variety of the light – black scale. This is due to the fact that sans serif families tend to be less susceptible to deformities in form, and thus they are able to retain their original character throughout the full range of weights. On the other hand, the nature of serifed, contrasted cuts does not permit such extremes without sacrificing their characteristic features. Both weights were drawn by hand, only the Medium cut has been interpolated. Anselm Ten is a unique family of four cuts, slightly strengthened and adjusted for the setting in sizes around 10 pt and smaller, as its name indicates. The ancestry of Anselm goes back to Jannon , a slightly modified Old Style Roman. I drew Serapion back in 1997, so its spirit is youthful, a bit frisky, and it is charmed by romantic, playful details. Anselm succeeds it after ten years of evolution, it is a sober, reliable laborer, immune to all eccentricities. The most significant difference between Sebastian/Serapion and Anselm is the raised x-height of lowercase, which makes it ideal for applications in extensive texts. Our goal was to create an all-round type family, equally suitable for poetry, magazines, books, posters, and information systems.