A few bold caps drawn by Albert Du Bois for the 1906 Henderson Sign Painter book started me in the direction of looking at how sign painters approached slabs after the industrial revolution. The usual happened from there. My exercise in the early lettering roots of what eventually became the definition of geometric typography ended up having a life of its own. The majuscules led to minuscules, one idiosyncratic bold weight led to six more, and uprights led to italics. What was kind-of-interesting in the early twentieth century persuaded me to make it interesting enough a century later. This of course meant alternates, swashes, the standard baggage that keeps calling my name. Henderson Slab is a family of seven weights plus italics, all full of open features and extended Latin language support. Part of this family’s appeal is its coverage of nearly the entire of the slab serif through the last 100 years — the basis is the manual, humanist origins, the swashed forms come right out of the phototypesetting era, and the alternates and mostly modern constructs of contemporary ideas. The result is a set with the ability to function in modern spaces, from corporate to editorial, in text or display, while both winking and nodding at the roots of what is now considered a geometric endeavor. (Basic version do not include alternates, swashes, etc).

Designed by Cosimo Lorenzo Pancini and Andrea Tartarelli with Maria Chiara Fantini, Lovelace is Zetafonts homage to the tradition of nineteenth century “Old Style” typography - a revival of Renaissance hand-lettered shapes driven by the desire to create a less formal and more friendly alternative to Bodonian serifs. While taking inspiration from the letter shapes created by Pheimester or Alexander Kay - with their calligraphic curves and heavy angled serifs that influenced Benguiat and Goudy’s typefaces in the 70s - we also tried to add elegance and contrast by following another 19th century revival style: the Elzevir. This digital homage to victorian typography, aptly named after the algorist daughter of lord Byron, is developed in two optical sizes, both in a six weights range from extralight to extrabold. The text variant offers maximum readability thanks to the generous x-height and screen-friendly design, while the display variant excels in the sharp contrast and thin details needed for editorial and large-size titling use. The italics, strongly influenced by calligraphy, have been complemented with a display script family, including luscious swashes and connected lowercase letters, lovingly designed by Zetafont in-house calligrapher. All the thirty weights of Lovelace cover over 200 languages that use latin, cyrillic and greek alphabets, and include advanced Open Type features as Stylistic Alternates, Standard and Discretionary Ligatures, Positional Numerals, Small Caps and Case Sensitive Forms.

Continuo is a fascinating, all-uppercase display typeface wherein the contour of each letterform is described with a single, continuous line. The challenges presented by that simple idea are similar to constructing letterforms with neon tubing. For example, when the strokes of a letterform need to be heavier than the width of the neon tube, two tubes are employed to create the outer contours, effectively leaving an unfilled void inside the stroke. Also, since neon tubes cannot be broken apart as they trace the contours, they must follow a path that, for reasons of economy and to avoid optical massing (or bright spots in neon), the tubes are not crossed. So too, the construction of Continuo follows. The newly updated Continuo now has alternate forms of letters A-Z available in the lowercase a-z and by extension those alternates are also present in the lowercase diacritics. The new Latin Plus glyph repertoire of Continuo contains almost 900 glyphs, supporting 224 languages, including Vietnamese and multiple African languages. A handy set of arrows and additional international currency symbols were added as well. The name is derived from the musical term “Basso Continuo” meaning an almost constant bass line, an integral part of most musical melodies. As an in-line display type, Continuo is ideal for headlines and most oversized applications and its unique appearance commands attention from viewers.

Many local variants of the Greek alphabet were employed in ancient Greece during the archaic and early classical periods, until around 400 BC, when they were replaced by the classical 24-letter alphabet that is the standard today. All forms of the Greek alphabet were originally based on the shared inventory of the 22 symbols of the Phoenician alphabet, with the exception of the letter Samekh, whose Greek counterpart Xi (Ξ) was used only in a sub-group of Greek alphabets, and with the common addition of Upsilon (Υ) for the vowel /u, ū/.[1][2] The local, so-called epichoric, alphabets differed in many ways: in the use of the consonant symbols Χ, Φ and Ψ; in the use of the innovative long vowel letters (Ω and Η), in the absence or presence of Η in its original consonant function (/h/); in the use or non-use of certain archaic letters (Ϝ = /w/, Ϙ = /k/, Ϻ = /s/); and in many details of the individual shapes of each letter. The system now familiar as the standard 24-letter Greek alphabet was originally the regional variant of the Ionian cities in Anatolia. It was officially adopted in Athens in 403 BC and in most of the rest of the Greek world by the middle of the 4th century BC.

Quercus is characterised by open, yet a little bit condensed drawing with sufficient spacing so that the neighbouring letters never touch. It has eight interpolated weights with respective italics. Their fine gradation allows to find an exact valeur for any kind of design, especially on the web. Quercus serif styles took inspiration from classicistic typefaces with vertical shadows, ball terminals and thin serifs. The italics have the same width proportion as upright styles. This “modern” attitude is applied to both families and calls for use on the same page, e g in dictionaries and cultural programmes. Serif styles marked by “10” are dedicated to textual point sizes and long reading. The sans-serif principle is rather minimalistic, with subtle shadows and thinned joints between curved shapes and stems. Quercus family comprises of the usual functionality such as Small Caps, Cyrillics, diacritics, ligatures, scientific and aesthetic variants, swashes, and other bells & whistles. It excels in informational and magazine design, corporate identity and branding, but it’s very well suited for book covers, catalogues and posters as well. When choosing a name for this typeface I've been staring out from my studio window, thinking helplessly without any idea in sight. Suddenly I realised that all I can see is a spectacular alley of oaks (Quercus in Latin) surrounding my house. These oaks were planted by the builders of local ponds under the leadership of Jakub Krčín in the fifteenth century.

Quercus is characterised by open, yet a little bit condensed drawing with sufficient spacing so that the neighbouring letters never touch. It has eight interpolated weights with respective italics. Their fine gradation allows to find an exact valeur for any kind of design, especially on the web. Quercus serif styles took inspiration from classicistic typefaces with vertical shadows, ball terminals and thin serifs. The italics have the same width proportion as upright styles. This “modern” attitude is applied to both families and calls for use on the same page, e g in dictionaries and cultural programmes. Serif styles marked by “10” are dedicated to textual point sizes and long reading. The sans-serif principle is rather minimalistic, with subtle shadows and thinned joints between curved shapes and stems. Quercus family comprises of the usual functionality such as Small Caps, Cyrillics, diacritics, ligatures, scientific and aesthetic variants, swashes, and other bells & whistles. It excels in informational and magazine design, corporate identity and branding, but it’s very well suited for book covers, catalogues and posters as well. When choosing a name for this typeface I've been staring out from my studio window, thinking helplessly without any idea in sight. Suddenly I realised that all I can see is a spectacular alley of oaks (Quercus in Latin) surrounding my house. These oaks were planted by the builders of local ponds under the leadership of Jakub Krčín in the fifteenth century.

Quercus is characterised by open, yet a little bit condensed drawing with sufficient spacing so that the neighbouring letters never touch. It has eight interpolated weights with respective italics. Their fine gradation allows to find an exact valeur for any kind of design, especially on the web. Quercus serif styles took inspiration from classicistic typefaces with vertical shadows, ball terminals and thin serifs. The italics have the same width proportion as upright styles. This “modern” attitude is applied to both families and calls for use on the same page, e g in dictionaries and cultural programmes. Serif styles marked by “10” are dedicated to textual point sizes and long reading. The sans-serif principle is rather minimalistic, with subtle shadows and thinned joints between curved shapes and stems. Quercus family comprises of the usual functionality such as Small Caps, Cyrillics, diacritics, ligatures, scientific and aesthetic variants, swashes, and other bells & whistles. It excels in informational and magazine design, corporate identity and branding, but it’s very well suited for book covers, catalogues and posters as well. When choosing a name for this typeface I've been staring out from my studio window, thinking helplessly without any idea in sight. Suddenly I realised that all I can see is a spectacular alley of oaks (Quercus in Latin) surrounding my house. These oaks were planted by the builders of local ponds under the leadership of Jakub Krčín in the fifteenth century.

“Quercus” is characterised by open, yet a little bit condensed drawing with sufficient spacing so that the neighbouring letters never touch. It has eight interpolated weights with respective italics. Their fine gradation allows to find an exact valeur for any kind of design, especially on the web. Quercus serif styles took inspiration from classicistic typefaces with vertical shadows, ball terminals and thin serifs. The italics have the same width proportion as upright styles. This “modern” attitude is applied to both families and calls for use on the same page, e g in dictionaries and cultural programmes. Serif styles marked by “10” are dedicated to textual point sizes and long reading. The sans-serif principle is rather minimalistic, with subtle shadows and thinned joints between curved shapes and stems. Quercus family comprises of the usual functionality such as Small Caps, Cyrillics, diacritics, ligatures, scientific and aesthetic variants, swashes, and other bells & whistles. It excels in informational and magazine design, corporate identity and branding, but it’s very well suited for book covers, catalogues and posters as well. When choosing a name for this typeface I've been staring out from my studio window, thinking helplessly without any idea in sight. Suddenly I realised that all I can see is a spectacular alley of oaks (Quercus in Latin) surrounding my house. These oaks were planted by the builders of local ponds under the leadership of Jakub Krčín in the fifteenth century.

Noctis was originally born as a single weight display typeface, designed by Luca Terzo who took inspiration by the unusual wedge serifs of Aldo Novarese's 1972 typeface for H. Berthold A.G., Primate. The design was developed by the Italian Type team into a full family of five weights from thin, each with its own true italic, and with a complementary set of decorative patterns. The strong Didonesque contrasts make this typeface both impressive at display sizes and easily readable in text size, while the sharp shapes of the triangular serifs and the distinctive letter shapes show their strength in logo design and impressive editorial use. Inspired by the elegant, self conscious and over-the-top aesthetics of Italian fashion scene of the eighties and nineties, Noctis finds its strength in its strong textural nature, that is explored in the Noctis Texturae subfamily, where each letter is used as a tile to produce seamless patterns that can be used to extend the branding capabilities of Noctis. Noctis features an extended latin character set of 481 glyphs covering over 190 languages, and includes advanced open type features like standard and discretionary ligatures, positional numerals, stylistic alternates and case sensitive brackets. Mixing versatility and personality, Noctis is ready to be like a top model on the design catwalk, making your projects looking classic but contemporary, finely tuned but assertive, and elegant as the best Italian luxury fashion.

Our eye is able to join missing parts of worn letters back into undisturbed shapes. We tend to see things better than they really are. Thanks to this ability we ignore faults of those close to us as we can’t accept the fact that every once in a while we convene with an impaired entity. Typography is merely a man’s invention, hence imperfection and transience, albeit overlooked, are its key features. This typeface is based on worn-out letterings on tombstones in the St. Croce basilica in Florence. For hundreds of years, microscopic particles of marble are being taken away on the soles of visitors: the embossed figures become fossilised white clouds, fragments of inscriptions are nearing the limits of legibility. First missing are thin joins and serifs, then the main strokes finally slowly diminish into nothingness over time. Unlike an archaeologist, for whom even completely featureless stele is valuable, the typographer must capture the proper moment of wear, when the type is not too “new” but also not too much decimated. Such typeface is usable for catalogue jackets, invitations and posters. Calligraphy is a natural human trait. To write is to create characters of reasonable beauty and content, according to the nature of the writer. A natural characteristic of architecture is to create an aesthetic message very similar to the alphabet. A doric column, the gabled roof, the circle of the well plan: these are the basic shapes from which all text typeface is derived.

Some words from the designer, Frantisek Storm... Designed by Josef Tyfa in 1959, digitalized by F. Storm in 1996. This Roman and Italic are well-known perhaps to all Czech graphic artists and typographers ever since their release. Although this type face in some details is under the sway of the period of its rise, its importance is timeless, in contradistinction to other famous types dating from the turn of the sixties which were found, after some time, to be trite. The italics live their own life, only their upper-case letters have the same expression as the basic design. Thin and fragile, they work excellently, emphasizing certain parts in the text by their perfect contrast of expression. When seen from a distance they are a little bit darker than the Roman face. Tyfa Roman was released in 1960 by Grafotechna in Prague for hot setting. Later on, Berthold produced letter matrices - "rulers" for Staromat devices, used for manual photosetting of display alphabets. In the eighties it was available on dry transfers of Transotype and today it is offered also by ITC. The meticulously executed designs of the individual letters in the 288 point size are arranged into a set of signs on a cardboard of about B2 in size. The yellowed paper reveals retouches by white paint on the ink. Blue lines mark the baseline, the capital line, the ascender and descender lines and the central verticals of the letters. With regard to the format of the flat scanner, the designs had to be reduced, with the use of a camera, to the format A4, i.e. to the upper-case letter height of about 30 mm. These were then scanned in 600 dpi resolution and read as a bitmap template to the FontStudio programme. The newly created bold type faces derive from Tyfa's designs of the letters "a", "n", "p", the darkness of which was increased further, approximately by 3%, to enhance their emphasizing function. The text designs have hairstrokes thickened by one third; the contrast between thin and thick strokes has been modified, in order to improve legibility, in sizes under 12 points. We have used electronic interpolation to produce the semi-bold designs. Josef Tyfa himself recommends to choose a somewhat darker design than the basic one for printing of books.

Originally designed in 1928, Plak is something of a lost gem in the type world. Despite being drawn by Futura creator Paul Renner, it never achieved the same popularity and spent decades lacking a much-needed digital revival. Monotype designers Linda Hintz and Toshi Omagari have taken its existing three weights and, after extensive research into the original wood type, extended them into the vast Neue Plak family. The typeface is available in 60 weights that stay true to Renner’s intentions, and offer the same blend of “quirky” details and “German stiffness” – as Hintz describes it. The design is an unusual mixture, bringing together a defiant outer appearance that’s counteracted by more playful details found in the lowercase r, and the large dots of the lowercase i. Other distinctive details include open or strikethrough counters, and a set of hairline widths that reduce Renner’s original design to its bare bones. Neue Plak’s display weights are crying out to be used in editorial, on packaging or in logos, while its text weight works well in both print and digital environments. Neue Plak Text Variables are font files which are featuring one axis and have a preset instance from Thin to Black

Who haven't heard the phrase that ‘any past time was better’?. Although I sometimes find this phrase a little too pessimistic (because I try to think that the best is yet to come), it may be true regarding my passion, typography. I'm too young (29) unfortunately, and this means I did not have the pleasure of being contemporary with maybe the man who has influenced my work the most (1). The man that showed that letters are more than just letters to be read. Herb Lubalin (1918-1981), also called sometimes as ‘the rule basher’ (2), smashed the taboos and sacred rules of type design and gave it personality. He rejected the functionalist philosophy of europeans in favor of an eclectic and exuberant style. To him, letters were not merely vessels of form, they were objects of meaning. (3). Nowadays, when looking at his portfolio, who dares to deny that the term ‘typography’ and ‘beauty’ may go hand-in-hand without any problem? Ed Benguiat, one of Herb’s partners, still likes making jokes with the phrase “screw legibility, type should be beautiful” and what I understand of this is not to forget the rules, but to know and break them carefully. In an era of pure eclecticism, we, the lovers of flourishes and swashes, can't do nothing but admire all the legacy that Lubalin, this wonderful type-guru, left. My font Lubaline read as “the line of Lubalin” is my humble tribute to him. Those who know his work, may see the influences easily like in his ‘Beards’ (1976) and ‘The Sound of Music’ (1965) posters; the art-deco forms in many of his amazing logos and practically in all his creations where letters seem to be alive just like you and me. I really hope that the future finds me still learning more and more about type-design and letterforms, and like him, always willing to make innovations in my field: Because letters are not just letters to be read. NOTES (1) These are some of my fonts in which some of Lubalin’s influences can be seen (in order of creation): Reina, Aire, Erotica, String, Beatle, Heroe, Selfie, Model, Seventies, and many others that are still in progress. (2) (3) Steven Heller. Herb Lubalin: Rule Basher. U&lc (1998) http://www.printmag.com/imprint/my-favorite-lubalin/

The Azbuka™ typeface family has its roots in a fairly pedestrian source. “The idea came in part from an old sign in London that read ‘SPRINKLER STOP VALVE’,” says Dave Farey, designer of the typeface. Like all good sign spotters, Farey took a photograph of the sign and filed it away for possible use in a lettering or typeface design project. In Prague a number of years later, the street signs reminded Farey of the London signage - and his camera came out again. Comparing the two back in his studio, he realized that the signs from London and Prague were not as similar as he initially thought. However, they were enough alike to serve as the foundation for a no-frills, 21st century sans serif typeface family. “I wanted to draw a wide range of weights, italic and condensed designs all in one go,” recalls Farey, “rather than add on to the family later.” His goal was to create a family that could be used for text and display copy, with sufficient weights to provide a broad typographic palette. Indeed, the completed design, created in collaboration with fellow type designer Richard Dawson, consists of twenty typefaces in eight weights ranging from extra light to extra black. The five mid-range designs have complementary italics. Seven condensed designs round out the family. Azbuka’s lighter weights perform remarkably well in blocks of text composition. “They’re clean and legible - and perhaps a little boring,” says Farey, “but they are perfect for copy with a down-to-earth, yet contemporary flavor.” The heavier weights are equally well suited for a variety of display uses. The designs are authoritative but not overbearing and will readily make a strong statement without calling attention to themselves. The condensed weights of Azbuka are ideal for those instances where you have a lot to say - and not much room to say it. The name Azbuka? It’s Russian for “alphabet.” And what more appropriate name could there be for this utilitarian, industrial-strength type family than alphabet? The Azbuka family is available as a suite of OpenType Pro fonts. Graphic communicators can now work with this versatile design while taking advantage of OpenType’s capabilities. The Azbuka Pro fonts also offer an extended character set that supports most Central European and many Eastern European languages