It started with an italic, or to be more precise, half an italic. The slanted styles of Urge Text exhibit a certain bipolarity, the tops of glyphs having a standard italic form, the bottoms of glyphs being more Roman in their construction. This sturdy footing really locks the italics to the baseline, making them very legible while still being distinct from the uprights. The same bipolar approach didn't work very well in upright styles, so the Romans are more toned down. Ranging from the almost monoline, Egyptian style light weights to higher contrast ‘Modern’ bolds, there is much potential for use in typographically demanding scenarios. The family consists of six weights, normal and condensed widths, all with italics, making a total of 24 fonts; it’s a highly usable text typeface with an array of OpenType features. All styles include small caps, multiple figure styles (proportional- and tabular-, oldstyle and lining, small cap proportional figures, numerators, denominators, superscript and subscript), standard ligatures, alternate forms (stylistic sets), automatic fractions, case sensitive forms, and a handy (perhaps!) ‘percent off’ ligature in the discretionary ligatures feature.

The x factor How do you make a font like FS Albert unique, distinctive? “When designing a font I try to question every letter,” says Jason Smith, “but all you need is a few that have an x factor. With FS Albert, they’re the lowercase ‘a’ and ‘g’ and the uppercase ‘I’ and ‘J’. “I remember a friend saying, ‘Why on earth have you designed the ‘a’ like that? Isn’t it too friendly for this kind of font?’ And, in a way, that’s what I wanted – honesty and warmth, because a lot of big brands at the time really needed to show a more human side.” Range of weights and styles FS Albert is a charismatic type: a warm, friendly sans serif face with a big personality. Open, strong and amenable, and available in a wide range of weights and styles, FS Albert suits almost every task you put it to. Fontsmith has crafted five finely-tuned upright Roman weights and four italic weights, as well as a special Narrow version to provide the best coverage and give headlines and text an easy-going character. The chunky kid “FS Albert was inspired by – and named after – my son, who was a bit of a chunky kid,” says Jason Smith. “I designed an extra bold weight because I always felt that the really big font heavy weights had the most personality. “I recently told Albert this story. He laughed, and forgave me for thinking he was a fat baby. He liked the big personality bit, though.” 1000s of glyphs Not content with a character set that covered Europe and the whole of the Western world, the studio decided to go further afield. There are now FS Albert character sets that cover western and eastern European languages, including those of Russia, as well as Cyrillic, Arabic and Greek scripts. In fact, the font now covers more than 100 languages, making it ideal for bringing a consistent typographic style to the communications of global brands.

The x factor How do you make a font like FS Albert unique, distinctive? “When designing a font I try to question every letter,” says Jason Smith, “but all you need is a few that have an x factor. With FS Albert, they’re the lowercase ‘a’ and ‘g’ and the uppercase ‘I’ and ‘J’. “I remember a friend saying, ‘Why on earth have you designed the ‘a’ like that? Isn’t it too friendly for this kind of font?’ And, in a way, that’s what I wanted – honesty and warmth, because a lot of big brands at the time really needed to show a more human side.” Range of weights and styles FS Albert is a charismatic type: a warm, friendly sans serif face with a big personality. Open, strong and amenable, and available in a wide range of weights and styles, FS Albert suits almost every task you put it to. Fontsmith has crafted five finely-tuned upright Roman weights and four italic weights, as well as a special Narrow version to provide the best coverage and give headlines and text an easy-going character. The chunky kid “FS Albert was inspired by – and named after – my son, who was a bit of a chunky kid,” says Jason Smith. “I designed an extra bold weight because I always felt that the really big font heavy weights had the most personality. “I recently told Albert this story. He laughed, and forgave me for thinking he was a fat baby. He liked the big personality bit, though.” 1000s of glyphs Not content with a character set that covered Europe and the whole of the Western world, the studio decided to go further afield. There are now FS Albert character sets that cover western and eastern European languages, including those of Russia, as well as Cyrillic, Arabic and Greek scripts. In fact, the font now covers more than 100 languages, making it ideal for bringing a consistent typographic style to the communications of global brands.

Inspired by both turn of the century neoclassical forms and Dutch Fleischmann Type, Garvis is designed to bring the character of those typefaces into more modern times by increasing the sturdiness of the forms without losing their character. At display sizes, this typeface displays the subtle inconsistencies commonly found in traditional metal type printing. This detail is designed to virtually disappear at text size so as not to become distracting while still giving the text a warm, human quality. Garvis includes support for all contemporary (and many historic) Latin orthographies as well as complete IPA support.

Torbjörn Olsson's Interrupt is a salty dog of a sanserif, harboring memories of freighters unloading their cargo in a run-down port. Interrupt works great for signs, and looks just fine painted on the side of a wooden crate or stencilled on an old tarpaulin. Interrupt is recommended for use over 36 points. You have run out of packing crates and would like to use it on paper? Sure, Interrupt can add its sturdy sailor's gait to any medium... just don't set any novel in Interrupt. Not even Melville. Interrupt is an OpenType typeface for both PC and Mac.

In its characteristics Xtra Sans is a combination of modern grotesks/grotesques and traditional calligraphy. Its upright and compact letterforms generate a sturdy effect as in the early 20th century grotesks Nobel, Kabel or Erbar. On the contrary, dynamic inside forms (counters) give the characters a fluent appearance. As a result, Xtra Sans stands out in large size, while remaining highly legible in small and long text. In 2007 Xtra Sans received a Certificate of Excellence in Type Design from Type Directors Club, New York. In 2002, still unpublished, it was awarded a bronze prize at the Morisawa Awards, Tokyo.

Rosina is a geometric typeface with a distinctive charm. With a captivating fusion of dashing 1920s style and 21st Century sensibility, geometric forms have been taken and optically adjusted to create a sturdy typeface. Tall ascenders and descenders attempt to simulate architectural features of the Art Deco period, striving for a look of the future, nevertheless form always follows function. Rosina explores typographic boundaries and lends itself well to branding, posters and other display uses. Full details include 6 weights from Thin to UltraBold and include a range of OpenType features such as case sensitive punctuation.

Epoca, designed in 2010, is a classic linear sans for text and display. It has economical proportions, a neutral appearance and a discreet elegance. While sturdy and robust, it is nonetheless a strong workhorse. The slightly angular shape of the round elements results in a quiet flow of the line which enables fatigue-proof reading even with large amounts of text. Epoca comes in eight styles and in OpenType format. All weights contain small caps, standard ligatures, proportional lining figures, tabular lining figures, proportional old style figures, lining old style figures, matching currency symbols, fraction- and scientific numerals.

Linotype Really, designed by Gary Munch, is a typeface family of six weights with italics and small capitals that offers a broad palette of expressions to draw from, sensibly light to brightly stentorian. The moderate-to-strong contrast of the vertical to horizontal strokes recalls the Transitional and Modern styles of Baskerville and Bodoni, and the subtly obliqued axis of the stoke weight recalls the old-style faces of Caslon. A strong belt of sturdy serifs completes the Realist sensibility of a clear, readable, no-nonsense text face whose clean details offer the designer a high-impact display face.

A sturdy and solid presence, CamingoSlab is defined by its heavy serifs, low stroke contrast and elliptic curves. Yet it retains a light touch, and feels vivid and friendly, thanks to the humanistic tone that derives more from handwriting than from strict construction. Special attention has been paid to compatibility with the other members of the Camingo series — With their consistent line heights, an equal grey value and the same formal language it can be seamlessly combined with CamingoDos and CamingoMono. CamingoSlab comes with a Pro version that contains small caps, ligatures, 10 different figure sets, stylistic alternates and two sets of arrows.

Bahn is heavily inspired by the sturdiness in the simplicity of the Autobahn together with the German highway typeface DIN 1451. Designed with straight-forward concept, clean and simple, direct and comprehensible. Nevertheless, Bahn still mange to insert the friendliness touch to the character which makes it easy to use and well-suited with other typefaces, letters or in various styles and possibilities of layouts that may occurred in the future. Bahn comes with 9 weights from the thinnest to the heaviest possible, accompanied with Italics for extensive usage. Not satisfied? Bahn also comes with Variables that will sure suited your needs.

Archemy is a restricted and obscure branch of Alchemy that deals specifically with the life, generation and transmutation of Metals. The Archemy font is primarily a magical and alchemical alphabet. It was created on initiative of Senior Zadith, in order to properly quote older alchemical manuscripts, without the need to insert handwritten symbols. The font combines a unique and elegant Roman alphabet with a set of the most frequently used planetary and alchemical symbols that are common in the Western Mystery Tradition, and as used by those involved in the Royal Art. The Archemy font contains a selection of symbols that are still used by practitioners of the Art today, and for the sake of completeness, a selection of less used and more arcane symbols that can be found in older alchemical texts. In addition a Hebrew Alphabet is included, which will supply practitioners of the Art with the glyphs related to Cabalistic studies. The Hebrew Alphabet in this font does not include vowel points, since they have no place in ancient Hebrew, nor in the Western Mystery Tradition. A selection of the most distinct glyphs as used in the Antediluvian font family - the Alphabet of the Ancients - is included for those that wish to include the archetypal and arcane quality of these glyphs from the dawn of history. By our knowledge there exists at this time no font that includes a selection of Alchemical symbols, let alone combines all of the above mentioned archetypal symbols of occult language in a single package. In that respect Archemy can be considered to be an “Arch” font.

This classified version of Monkton, with its expanded proportions and extended serifs can be used at small sizes for classified advertising, newspaper text or larger displays. Its semi-medium weight (heavier than Book weight) makes it robust to be legible when smaller and cope with various printing methods. The inspiration for this typeface family came from my childhood experiences at Monkton, amidst an historic part of the South West of England. Studies of the original incised capitals of the Trajan column in Rome were analysed and polished for this modern version. The lower case letterforms and numerals were then created in sympathy, taking their proportions from the incised letters of local gravestones. Its name honours not only the area where the original alphabet was conceived and drawn, but also the people responsible for fostering my initial interest in letters.

Hollander is a refined, yet sturdy text typeface designed by Gerard Unger. The name stems from the font’s similarity to the types attributed to van Dijk and Voskens, two Dutch punchcutters from the seventeenth century. Like those earlier Dutch types, Hollander has generous proportions, a tall x-height, and high contrast between thick and thin strokes. It was designed to work in the early arenas of digital technology, when letters were generated as coarse pixels with a cathode ray tube in the typesetters of the 1970s, and then as finer pixels with a laser beam in the machines of the 1980s. Hollander has a well-drawn stability that maintains legibility even on inferior quality paper. When used as a display face, Hollander is an excellent companion to one of Unger’s most successful text faces, Swift.

Saddle up and venture into uncharted typographic territory with Canyon Slab, a wild west-inspired serif slab typeface that beckons you to explore the untamed frontiers of design. Like the rugged canyons that have withstood the test of time, this font's bold serifs and sturdy letterforms exude a sense of strength and adventure. Canyon Slab captures the spirit of the old west, where legends were born and tales of grit and determination echoed through the canyons. As you wield this powerful typeface, you'll feel the dust of the trail beneath your feet, hear the echo of revolvers in the air, and taste the thrill of unbridled exploration. Channel the untamed spirit of the wild west with Canyon Slab, and let your designs ride into the sunset of creativity.

New York vibes FS Irwin was born in New York while Senior Designer, Fernando Mello, was studying an intensive 5 week typeface design course at the Cooper Union. His brief was to design a perfectly clear typeface that could communicate well, without loud or overtly mannered design features. Fernando was influenced by the subway font in New York: ‘It is very in your face and clear, always in bold. It doesn’t shout much but at the same time is very present and unique. The design is completely different but it was this spirit I wanted to capture for FS Irwin.’ And the vibe of the city: ‘In a similar way to London, New York is so mixed and so cosmopolitan. I was amazed by the different styles and identities I saw there, and tried to encapsulate this essence to create something new, relevant and very now.’ Incisive quality Rather than focusing on quirks or distinctive characteristics, the key to FS Irwin is the quality of its design and spirit of simplicity. The design, proportions and details are usable and authentic and it is suitable for countless situations, without running the risk of being instantaneously noticeable. Families like this can be used on nearly anything, from more playful designs to serious corporate IDs. ‘Extensively tested and precisely drawn text-oriented typefaces are what I enjoy designing the most. There is a beauty and a different approach, a different way of making them interesting, sellable and usable rather than adding flicks or unexpected details.’ Inscriptions and calligraphy FS Irwin’s origin lies in Fernando’s studies in inscriptional lettering and writing-calligraphic exercises at the Cooper Union. Mello started the process by digitising his explorations and adapting them into a more workable sans serif structure. The traditional forms of writing which gave the basis to Latin type as we know it today were the perfect place to start. This influence can be seen in the proportion of the capitals and in slight writing-calligraphic details in the lowercase, such as the slightly angled, chiselled spurs and their open terminals.

Hops And Barley - a Vintage Font Collection. Hops And Barley includes following: • 6 fonts - a textured and clean version of each • Catchwords, textured and clean version • Ornaments, textured and clean version Hops And Barleys’ core is four font styles. Fonts are designed in the same proportions and they have the same soft edges so that they work great together. Here’s a short introduction to the fonts • Hops And Barley 1 -A Connected Script with Contextual, Swash, Stylistic and Titling Alternates • Hops And Barley 1b -A Bold version of Script • Hops And Barley 2 -A Serif vernacular Swash, Stylistic and Titling Alternates • Hops And Barley 3 -A sturdy Sans Serif with a wide character. • Hops And Barley 3b -A Bold version of Sans Serif • Hops And Barley 4 -A Condensed Sans Serif • Hops And Barley 5 -A set of 61 Catchwords • Hops And Barley 6 -A set of 71 Pictograms Hops and Barley fonts have rugged outline and eroded texture inside the letters. Hops And Barley C stands for Clean - they are an identical set of the styles but they come with straight and clean outlines and softened edges. Hops and Barley fonts work great together or on their own. They’re a fantastic choice for any display use and when paired they can cover the whole display part in any project from website to packaging and from poster to logo.