IngrimayneType has put letters inside a variety of objects, including bowling pins, book covers, coffee mugs, teapots, pumpkins, Christmas ornaments, train cars, tombstones, old bottles, circles, and rectangles. In each case the letters were placed on a single shape. The use of the Opentype feature of contextual alternatives makes it easy to use two different but alternating shapes. ButterflyWingz puts its letters on the right and left wings of a butterfly. The wings provide a large surface for drawing letters, but they have a odd shape so letters must be distorted to fit. The wings are symmetrical but some letters are not, so the right and left wing versions of the same letter are sometimes quite different. Without the contextual alternative feature one could design a typeface like ButterflyWingz but the user would have to alternate upper and lower case keys. With contextual alternatives turned on, the computer automatically alternates the letters creating a line of complete butterflies. Turning on the Opentype feature stylistic styles one (ss01) replaces the empty spaces with empty wings. However, sometimes an empty wing at the end of a line is unwanted and it can be removed by changing the typeface or by turning off the stylistic style for that character. The family contains two styles, a filled style and an outline style. They can be used separately or together in layers to add color. (Empty wings are on the logicalnot and registered characters.) ButterflyWingz is hard to read and should be used in small doses for decorative effects.

Facit is a contemporary sans serif text face. It is designed to be a highly legible and flexible font that does not draw the attention to itself. Instead of being original by itself it is the result of a careful examination of ancient as well as modern formal concepts. “It is by definition impossible to design an un-conventional typeface. Type is pure convention, this is why we can read each other’s written words”, says its designer Tim Ahrens. However, rather than generating an average, existing principles were consciously combined into a unique design solution: The word ‘Facit’, in its German version, means ‘conclusion’. The fonts are provided in OpenType format. Each font contains 720 glyphs. Technically, they follow the Adobe Pro fonts and provide the same glyph set and OpenType functionality. OpenType features include ligatures, true small capitals, superiors, inferiors, numerators and denominators. Every font contains old style and lining figures, both in a proportional and a tabular design. For some letters there alternate characters.

A few years ago I've discovered the work of one of the most prolific typeface designers of the Bruce type Foundry in NYC during late nineteenth century. Browsing Julius Herriet's work I found a very unique kind of ligatures in his patented "Old Style Ornamented" type design. Some letters were designed with a little top tail that allowed them to connect to each other. After that, I found that he also designed a single italic weight of the same font 7 years later. Since the beginning of the Opentype days I’ve been deeply obsessed with exploring different ways to build ligatures, so that lead me up to this point where I felt the need to create “Plethora”, this new font inspired by Herriet’s work. Extrapolating weights, adding variable technology and playing with additional interconnected letters and alternates. Definitely, Plethora means a large or excessive amount of something, and this font tries to bring back this abundance of details two centuries later. Available in 9 weights, from roman to italic, and also as variable format, “Plethora” supports plenty of latin languages and is a perfect choice for today’s design tides.