The Cholla typeface family was designed by Sibylle Hagmann in 1998-99 and named after a species of cactus she encountered in the Mojave Desert. Cholla was originally developed for the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. There, art director Denise Gonzales Crisp and associate designer, Carla Figueroa, collaborated with Hagmann to create a series of fonts that would offer a great deal of variation. The variety was needed to echo the school's nine different departments, yet together the fonts had to exude a unified feel. It was first used in the radically designed 1999/2000 Art Center catalog which won a honorable mention in I.D. magazine and was featured in Eye No. 31. Originally Hagmann set out to design a typeface that, as she recalls, "I could feel comfortable making, first of all, and one that would serve a purpose and had a clear idea behind it, and something that I would want to use myself." Stylistically Hagmann set out to create "12 cuts with slightly different personalities, with different ideas applied. For example the bold weight isn't simply the Regular with weight gain, but has bold letterforms with their own peculiar details. What all weights share and what is the necessary unifying detail is the tapered curve - marked out, for example, in the lowercase b's left top and bottom of the bowl." Gonzales adds: "The forms seemed classical as well. This combination could have a long life, and be timely. I also saw - at least in the beginnings of Cholla - forms that connoted hybrid, of inter-connection, of human and machine growing together. These notions seem appropriate for a school that teaches design and art." Greek version by Panos Haratzopoulos.

Homelessfonts is an initiative by the Arrels foundation to support, raise awareness and bring some dignity to the life of homeless people in Barcelona Spain. Each of the fonts was carefully digitized from the handwriting of different homeless people who agreed to participate in this initiative. A biography/story of each homeless person captures their story, to help raise awareness and bring some dignity to the life of homeless people. Monotype is pleased to donate all revenue from the sales of Homelessfonts to the Arrels foundation in support of their mission to provide the homeless people in Barcelona with a path to independence with accommodations, food, social and health care. Juan Carlos was born in Barcelona, Spain 46 years ago. Since the age of 17 – and during eleven years – he worked double shifts of eight hours every day in a factory. Excessive work and family problems debilitated his health and he lost his job. He then faced a dilemma: to spend unemployment benefits to pay for rent or for food. For a few years, he worked helping in the kitchens of different restaurants while he lived on a pension, until he was definitively left without work and ended up living in the street for 10 years. “In the street I tried to find rest in the ATMs of banks. I preferred to be alone, and if I ran into conflictive people, I looked for somewhere else” he explains. Living in the street he was the victim of an aggression. Since then, with the help of Arrels he moved into a pension. Today, Juan Carlos is a volunteer in the shower service of Arrels, the same showers he used during years. He also collaborates with the maintenance team, helps prepare hygienic and cleaning material, and participates in activities such as the theatre group and the football team.

‘Krul’ is a typographic interpretation of the lettering style created by Dutch letter painter Jan Willem Joseph Visser at the end of the 1940s, which decorated the traditional brown bars of Amsterdam. In the beginning, these letters were strongly associated with the pubs connected to the Amstel brewery, given that Visser was the company’s official painter. As the years passed, the style became increasingly popular, and various business owners in Amsterdam and other Dutch and Belgian cities also commissioned its use. In the 1970s and 1980s, Leo Beukeboom, another talented letter painter, continued and expanded this lettering tradition while employed under the Heineken brand. Much of his work can still be found in the Jordaan and De Pijp neighborhoods in Amsterdam. The Amsterdamse Krulletter, or Amsterdam’s curly letter, is strongly inspired by the calligraphic works of the 17th century Dutch writing masters, of which Jan van den Velde was a central figure. However, distinct characteristics of this style, for example, its unusual and beautiful ‘g’, originate from a model that was published by Johannes Heuvelman in 1659, which J. W. J. Visser referenced. Typographic circles have somehow overlooked the Amsterdamse Krulletter and its heritage. The Dutch calligraphic hands preceded and influenced the formal English penmanship which has inspired numerous typefaces in the Copperplate style. In contrast, the models from van den Velde, Heuvelman, and Jean de la Chambre, among others, are a missing chapter in Dutch typographic history, and had never been turned into typefaces until now. Conscious of the cultural and identity issues that arise in reviving a unique style, and concerned about the speed with which the lettering style was disappearing, Ramiro Espinoza focused the project of designing ‘Krul’ on digitally recreating the calligraphic complexity of these beautiful letters. Created through several years of research, ‘Krul’ is not a direct digitization of the Amsterdamse Krulletter, but instead, an interpretation that incorporates numerous alternative characters absent in the original model, and improves upon details where necessary, resulting in an optimal performance on the printed page. The typeface is presented in Open Type format, with an abundance of intricate ligatures, fleurons, and swashes, which permit the creation of numerous calligraphic effects. The very high contrast and rhythm of the strokes in this typeface make it especially suited for media applications conveying a sense of elegance and sophistication. Designers of feminine magazines, advertisements, and corporate identities within the fragrance and fashion industries will find in this typeface to be an extremely useful and appropriate resource.The great Amsterdamse Krulletter is finally back, and we are proud to make it available to you.

Tomato is the digitization and quite elaborate expansion of an early 1970s Franklin Photolettering film type called Viola Flare. This typeface is an obvious child of funk, the audio-visual revolution that swept America and put an end to the art nouveau period we now associate with the hippy era. Funk is of course little more than jazz with a chorus and an emphatic beat. Nevertheless, it became the definition of cool in the 1970s, thanks to blaxploitation movies with excellent soundtracks like Shaft and Superfly. Funk began as a commercial audio experience, then later expanded its signature to cover everything, from design to fashion to the later birth of disco, which is really a further simplification of funk. Funk had very strong and unique typographical elements, particularly a kind of titling with an essentially western, wooden core that suddenly changed and flared in unexpected areas until a very individual brand was achieved. Everything that can be tacked on to the alphabet was used towards that individuality. Things like curls, swirls, swashes, ligatures were always plentiful in funk, sometimes giving the titling a specific gender, sometimes bulging, sometimes speeding, sometimes fading in the distance, sometimes doing nothing but crazily aligning with other design elements, but the result was always a fascinating creature that seemed to invariably want to dance and have fun. Tomato was built in exactly that spirit. The original film type certainly had enough swashes and curls to be an unmistakable funk font in itself, but our further expansion of it cements it and makes it the definite font for the genre. With as many as 12 different possibilities for some letters, the designer's choices for a titling set in Tomato are virtually limitless. The Postscript and True Type versions of Tomato come in five fonts, including two fonts for alternates, one font for ligatures, and one font for swashes. These are split into two affordable packages. The entire family package is also available at an even more affordable price, and includes complimentary Cyrillic, Greek, Turkish, and Central European versions of Tomato. A Tomato Pro OpenType version is also available. It is a single font that includes over 650 characters, glued together with extensive programming for convenience of use in OpenType-friendly applications, where you can watch the letters morph and dance as you push the buttons and change the options of your OT palette. Now you know which font will come to mind when someone says the word "funky".

Grappa, a traditional Italian spirit with a rich history, shares much in common with typefaces - both embody cultural heritage, craftsmanship, and a sensory experience. Grappa is distilled from the skins, pulp, seeds, and stems left over from winemaking, resulting in a strong and aromatic drink that varies in flavor based on the grape and distillation process. Similarly, typefaces are designed characters that convey a unique style, weight, and form, communicating messages and expressing ideas through text. We are thrilled to introduce Grappa, a stunning new font based on the classic "Invitation" typeface by Morris Fuller Benton, a renowned American designer. Grappa features nine weights and a variable font that offers greater customization, with unique triangle serifs that give it a distinct edge. The font also comes with a variety of alternates and swash characters, including a second version with modified alternate characters for even more design flexibility. Like Grappa, typefaces evoke emotions and cultural associations, often associated with specific historical periods, artistic movements, and contexts. Whether used in stationery, packaging, editorial design, or branding, Grappa is a versatile and timeless font that can add elegance and sophistication to any project. In conclusion, Grappa is an excellent addition to any designer's toolkit, offering a perfect blend of tradition and modernity. The font's distinctive personality and cultural connotations make it a beloved drink in Italy, and a font that can effectively communicate messages and ideas through text.

The font family Univers? is one of the greatest typographic achievements of the second half of the 20th century. The family has the advantage of having a variety of weights and styles, which, even when combined, give an impression of steadiness and homogeneity. The clear, objective forms of Univers make this a legible font suitable for almost any typographic need. In 1954 the French type foundry Deberny & Peignot wanted to add a linear sans serif type in several weights to the range of the Lumitype fonts. Adrian Frutiger, the foundry's art director, suggested refraining from adapting an existing alphabet. He wanted to instead make a new font that would, above all, be suitable for the typesetting of longer texts - quite an exciting challenge for a sans-serif font at that time. Starting with his old sketches from his student days at the School for the Applied Arts in Zurich, he created the Univers type family. In 1957, the family was released by Deberny & Piegnot, and afterwards, it was produced by Linotype. The Deberny & Peignot type library was acquired in 1972 by Haas, and the Haas'sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas Type Foundry) was folded into the D. Stempel AG/Linotype collection in 1985/1989. Adrian Frutiger continues to do design work with Linotype right up to the present day. In 1997, Frutiger and the design staff at Linotype completed a large joint project of completely re-designing and updating the Univers family. The result: Univers Next - available with 59 weights and 4 Linotype Univers Typewriter weights. With its sturdy, clean forms Univers can facilitate an expression of cool elegance and rational competence. Univers has the uncanny ability to combine well with fonts of many different styles and origins: Old style fonts such as: Janson Text, Meridien, Sabon, Wilke. Modern-stressed fonts such as: Linotype Centennial, Walbaum. Slab serif fonts such as Egyptienne F, Serifa. Script and brush fonts such as: Brush Script, Mistral, Ruling Script. Blackletter fonts such as: Duc De Berry, Grace, San Marco. Even fun fonts such as F2F OCRAlexczyk, Linotype Red Babe, Linotype Seven."

❧ Useful links: Luther’s Manuscripts at the UNESCO Memory of the World at Google Arts and Culture Martin Luther font on Kickstarter (with Film about the creation) Each letter of the Martin Luther font is strictly based on original samples found in Martin Luther’s 500 year old handwritten manuscripts. Letters that occur more often for example vowels have two or more different versions stored in the font. (➶ Figure 4) These alternative forms are exchanged automatically by the font as you type, and create a vivid look that comes close to actual handwriting. The font avoids that two identical letters are placed next to each other like, for example the two “o” in the word “look”. ➸ What Historic Sources is the Font based on? Two historic documents were used to base the font on. The notes Luther took before giving his speech in Worms in 1521 and a 6 page letter he wrote immediately after to Emperor Charles V., summarising his speech (➶ Figure 2). Both documents have been added to the UNESCO “Memory of the World” and can be seen at the Google Arts and Culture website. ➸ The Creation of a Handwriting Font The creation of a handwriting font is very different from the creation of a regular font. Harald Geisler has specialised in recreating handwriting in preceding projects with Albert Einstein’s, Sigmund Freud’s and his own handwriting. His experience working with Archives and Museums has gone into this project. First Geisler analyses the movement in the writing to understand how each letter is drawn. This involves partially learning how to write like a person. In this process not the outlines of the sample are reproduced but the original movement path of the handwriting (➶ Figure 3). In a second step width and contrast is added to reproduce Martin Luther’s characteristic impetus and the writing tools used at the time. (Link: Youtube Playlist showcasing the creation of individual letters) How about signs that can’t be found in archives? Some Glyphs can not be found in 500 year old manuscripts, for example the @-sign. Towards the end of the creation one collects a profund amount of details about how a writer moves on paper and addresses certain tasks moving the pen. Keeping this knowledge in mind an improvisation can be based on similar letter forms. For example the @ sign is based on of the movement of a lowercase a and parenthesis. ➸ Features of the Martin Luther font ❶ Extensive Documentation of the creation of the font, including high quality reproduction of the used manuscripts. ❷ Additional texts from Historian Dr. Henning Jürgens and Palaeographer (and Luther handwriting expert) Prof. Ulrich Bubenheimer ❸ Alternating Letters - in handwriting every word looks a bit different. To avoid that two identical letterforms are placed next to each other (for example in the word look) the font actively changes between different versions of letters as you type. ❹ Ligatures - characteristic writing forms when two letters are combined (for example “ct”) (➶ Figure 5) ❺ Terminal Letterforms - renders a special letterform when letter is at the end of a word. (➶ Figure 8) ❻ ‘’’Initial and Medial Letterforms''' - some letterforms are different when placed in the beginning or middle of a word, for example the lowercase s. ❼ Luther Rose - is a seal Luther used to authorise his correspondence. Today it is a widely recognized symbol for Luther. When you enter the numbers of Luthers year of birth and death 14831546 using the Martin Luther PRO font, it will render a stylised version of the Luther Rose. (➶ Figure 7) ❽ Historic letter-forms - letter-forms that are specific to medieval writing around 1500. For example the long-s or h with a loop at the bottom. (➶ Figure 6) ⚑ Multi language support - see the technical information tab for a full list of supported languages. (➶ Figure 11) ➸ The different Styles explained ❋ Martin Luther PRO - this includes all features listed above and is geared towards writing texts that are more readable today. It features alternating letters to create a natural handwriting look as well as two stylistic sets accessible through the OpenType menu. Historic forms are available through the glyph picker. ❋ Martin Luther Historic - this font creates a historically correct reproduction (i.e. with long-s) of Luther’s medieval latin handwriting. It features alternating letters to create a natural handwriting look as well as two stylistic sets accessible through the OpenType menu. ❋ Martin Luther Expert-1 - Dedicated access to the first set of letters only. ❋ Martin Luther Expert-2 - Dedicated access to the second set of letters only. ❈❈❈ Family Pack - recieve all fonts at a discounted price. ❈❈❈ ➸ Kickstarter The creation and development of the Martin Luther font was financed by 500 supporters on ➸Kickstarter.

A typeface with lightly-worn futurism, Sagittarius is equally at home among the beauty and wellness aisles, or the coils of the warp core. The Sagittarius typeface was designed by Jonathan Hoefler in 2021. A decorative adaptation of Hoefler’s Peristyle typeface (2017), Sagittarius’s rounded corners and streamlined shapes recall the digital aesthetic of the first alphabets designed for machine reading, a style that survives as a cheeky Space Age invocation of futurism. Sagittarius was created for The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, where it first appeared in 2021. From the desk of the designer: Typeface designers spend a lot of time chasing down strange valences. We try to figure out what’s producing that whiff of Art Deco, or that vaguely militaristic air, or what’s making a once solemn typeface suddenly feel tongue-in-cheek. If we can identify the source of these qualities, we can cultivate them, and change the direction of the design; more often, we just extinguish them without mercy. Sometimes, we get the chance to follow a third path, which is how we arrived at Sagittarius. During the development of Peristyle, our family of compact, high-contrast sans serifs, I often found myself unwittingly humming space-age pop songs. Nothing about Peristyle’s chic and elegant letterforms suggested the deadpan romp of “The Planet Plan” by United Future Organization, let alone “Music To Watch Space Girls By” from the ill-advised (but delicious) Leonard Nimoy Presents Mr. Spock’s Music from Outer Space, but there they were. Something in the fonts was provoking an afterimage of the otherworldly, as if the typeface was sliding in and out of a parallel universe of high-tech spycraft and low-tech brawls with rubber-masked aliens. It might have had something to do with a new eyeglass prescription. But I liked the effect, and started thinking about creating an alternate, space-age version of the typeface, one with a little more funk, and a lot more fun. I wondered if softer edges, a measured dose of seventies retrofuturism, and some proper draftsmanship might produce a typeface not only suitable for sci-fi potboilers, but for more serious projects, too: why not a line of skin care products, a fitness system, a high-end digital camera, or a music festival? I put a pin in the idea, wondering if there’d ever be a project that called for equal parts sobriety and fantasy. And almost immediately, exactly such a project appeared. The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Jesse Sheidlower is a lexicographer, a former Editor at Large for the Oxford English Dictionary, and a longtime friend. He’s someone who takes equal pleasure in the words ‘usufructuary’ and ‘megaboss,’ and therefore a welcome collaborator for the typeface designer whose love of the Flemish baroque is matched by a fondness for alphabets made of logs. Jesse was preparing to launch The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, a comprehensive online resource dedicated to the terminology of the genre, whose combination of scholarship and joy was a perfect fit for the typeface I imagined. For linguists, there’d be well-researched citations to explain how the hitherto uninvented ‘force field’ and ‘warp speed’ came to enter the lexicon. For science fiction fans, there’d be definitive (and sometimes surprising) histories of the argot of Stars both Trek and Wars. And for everyone, there’d be the pleasure of discovering science fiction’s less enduring contributions, from ‘saucerman’ to ‘braintape,’ each ripe for a comeback. A moderated, crowdsourced project, the dictionary is now online and growing every day. You’ll find it dressed in three font families from H&Co: Whitney ScreenSmart for its text, Decimal for its navigational icons, and Sagittarius for its headlines — with some of the font’s more fantastical alternate characters turned on. The New Typeface Sagittarius is a typeface whose rounded corners and streamlined forms give it a romantically scientific voice. In the interest of versatility, its letterforms make only oblique references to specific technologies, helping the typeface remain open to interpretation. But for projects that need the full-throated voice of science fiction, a few sets of digital accessories are included, which designers can introduce at their own discretion. There are alternate letters with futuristic pedigrees, from the barless A popularized by Danne & Blackburn’s 1975 ‘worm’ logo for NASA, to a disconnected K recalling the 1968 RCA logo by Lippincott & Margulies. A collection of digitally-inspired symbols are included for decorative use, from the evocative MICR symbols of electronic banking, to the obligatory barcodes that forever haunt human–machine interactions. More widely applicable are the font’s arrows and manicules, and the automatic substitutions that resolve thirty-four awkward combinations of letters with streamlined ligatures. About the Name Sagittarius is one of thirteen constellations of the zodiac, and home to some of astronomy’s most inspiring discoveries. In 1977, a powerful radio signal originating in the Sagittarius constellation was considered by many to be the most compelling recorded evidence of extraterrestrial life. Thanks to an astronomer’s enthusiastically penned comment, the 72-second transmission became known as the Wow! signal, and it galvanized support for one of science’s most affecting projects, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). More recently, Sagittarius has been identified as the location of a staggering celestial discovery: a supermassive black hole, some 44 million kilometers in diameter, in the Galactic Center of the Milky Way. <

In July 2014, using my light pen, I completed the work in designing the font - Nizar, which was named in honor of the great poet Nizar Qabbani who inspired millions through poetry and prose. The font depends mainly on the characteristics of the traditional Ruq'ah handwriting, but the spirit of the letters tend to embrace the distinguished style that we knew of the poet in his hand-written poetry books. Due to the fact that I could not find all the alphabets in the great poet's handwriting, I adopted the method of measurement and prediction for structure of the missing letters, Which resulted in a new style of the Ruq'ah Typeface; a closer look at the font highlights the common characteristics of all the usual Ruq'ah writings, which are the height of the character "Alef" and spaces and formation on the line, the contextual replacement and convergence of when a letter meets another, closed and open letters, letters coming down from the baseline, and the forms of dots. That been said, hidden touches in the details of Nizar Typeface can be observed, the characters are all dependent on one pen stroke thickness, and are attracted to the baseline as much as possible when vertically and horizontally formed, and the distance between words and lines grows leading to creating both an aesthetic and typographical touch distinguishing this font from the conventional Ruq'ah – which can be found in some of my previous Ruq'ah projects. It is important to mention that after the completion of the Arabic characters and punctuation, I began drawing the Latin alphabets, punctuation and necessary symbols. I cannot fail to also note that the Arabic characters include the Persian, and the Urdu characters. This Typeface is fit to be used in lengthy texts, especially in literary works, artistic print, and diverse visual display, giving the design striking features, modernity and distinction. Sultan Mohammed Saeed

Ambiguity is a type family with five distinct personalities or ‘states’, created as a tool for coaxing designers and brands out of their comfort zone. It embraces both tradition and radicality, as well as generosity and thrift, encouraging us to question our beliefs about the intersection of style and meaning. The family is designed by Charles Nix, who describes Ambiguity as “as much thought experiment as typeface.” Its five states—Tradition, Radical, Thrift, Generous and Normate—each express or subvert different aspects of typographic tradition. Tradition is conservative, relying on historical letter shapes. Radical rejects inherited ideas of proportion, making typically slender letterforms wide, and wide letterforms slender. “It’s contrarian,” says Nix. Thrift cherry picks the condensed shapes from Tradition and Radical, while Generous does the same for wide forms. Normate sits at the center, a synthetic blend of all of the others. “Tradition is very comforting,” says Nix. “It’s the mask of conservatism. It’s calming because it delivers the proportions we expect. With Thrift more fits into a smaller space, so it’s great where words want to get large, like gigantic headlines, or text needs to cram in, like small screen type. You get a sense of carefree and luxury from the Generous cut. One would expect the Radical to be used in a sort of Dadaist way, but in a classic context it provides an enjoyable jolt.” Ambiguity is a litmus test. Designers could spend hours trying on typefaces that offer just one of these voices. Ambiguity provides five different personalities—ideas—beliefs—each of which also work seamlessly together. “It’s a palettea, like idea cards,” he says. “It’s a way of making yourself see differently. My hope is that traditionalists will try on radical clothes and vice versa. It’s a way of exploring outside your comfort zone, breaking out of the doldrums, by stepping through a variety of voices.”