“A picture is worth a thousand words” and here, that’s more than true. Take a look at Erotica’s Booklet; Erotica’s Poster Design and Erotica’s User’s Guide before reading below. THE STYLES The difference between Pro and Std styles is the quantity of glyphs. Therefore, Pro styles include all the decorative alternates and ligatures while Std styles are a reduced version of Pro ones. Big and Small styles were thought for better printing results. While Big is recommended to be printed in big sizes, Small may be printed in tiny sizes and will still show its hairlines well. INTRODUCTION I have always wondered if the circle could ever be considered as an imperfect shape. Thousands of years have passed and we still consider circles as synonyms of infinite beauty. Some believe that there is something intrinsically “divine” that could be found in them. Sensuality is many times related to perfectly shaped strong curves, exuberant forms and a big contrasts. Erotica is a font created with this in mind. THE PROCESS This story begins one fine day of March in 2012. I was looking for something new. Something which would express the deep love I feel regarding calligraphy in a new way. At that time, I was practicing a lot of roundhand, testing and feeling different kinds of nibs; hearing the sometimes sharp, sometimes soft, sound of them sliding on the paper. This kind of calligraphy has some really strict rules: An even pattern of repetition is required, so you have to be absolutely aware of the pressure of the flexible pen; and of the distance between characters. Also, learning copperplate can be really useful to understand about proportion in letters and how a minimum change of it can drastically affect the look of the word and text. Many times I would forget about type-design and I would let myself go(1): Nothing like making the pen dance when adding some accolades above and below the written word. Once something is mastered, you are able to break some rules. At least, that’s my philosophy. (2) After some research, I found that the world was in need of a really sexy yet formal copperplate. (3) I started Erotica with the idea of taking some rules of this style to the extreme. Some characters were drawn with a pencil first because what I had in mind was impossible to be made with a pen. (4) Finding a graceful way to combine really thick thicks with really thin hairlines with satisfactory results demanded months of tough work: The embryo of Erotica was a lot more bolder than now and had a shorter x-height. Changing proportions of Erotica was crucial for its final look. The taller it became the sexier it looked. Like women again? The result is a font filled with tons of alternates which can make the user think he/she is the actual designer of the word/phrase due to the huge amount of possibilities when choosing glyphs. To make Erotica work well in small sizes too, I designed Erotica Small which can be printed in tiny sizes without any problems. For a more elegant purpose, I designed Erotica Inline, with exactly the same features you can find in the other styles. After finishing these styles, I needed a partner for Erotica. Inspired again in some old calligraphic books I found that Bickham used to accompany his wonderful scripts with some ornated roman caps. Erotica Capitals follows the essentials of those capitals and can be used with or without its alternates to accompany Erotica. In 2013, Erotica received a Certificate of Excellence in Type Design in the 59th TDC Type Directors Club Typeface Design Competition. Meet Erotica, beauty and elegance guaranteed. Notes (1) It is supossed that I'm a typographer rather than a calligrapher, but the truth is that I'm in the middle. Being a graphic designer makes me a little stubborn sometimes. But, I found that the more you don't think of type rules, the more graceful and lively pieces of calligraphy can be done. (2) “Know the forms well before you attempt to make them” used to say E. A. Lupfer, a master of this kind of script a century ago. And I would add “And once you know them, it’s time to fly...” (3) Some script fonts by my compatriots Sabrina Lopez, Ramiro Espinoza and Alejandro Paul deserve a mention here because of their undeniable beauty. The fact that many great copperplate fonts come from Argentina makes me feel really proud. Take a look at: Parfumerie, Medusa, Burgues, Poem and Bellisima. (4) Some calligraphers, graphic and type designer experimented in this field in the mid-to-late 20th century and made a really playful style out of it: Letters show a lot of personality and sometimes they seem drawn rather than written. I want to express my sincere admiration to the fantastic Herb Lubalin, and his friends Tony DiSpigna, Tom Carnase, and of course my fellow countryman Ricardo Rousselot. All of them, amazing.

A grotesque Mr Palkerson and slab serif Mr Palker build one superfamily together. These are blank types. In a way even the display ones. Typefaces for newspapers, announcements, cheap advertising and police posters.  Mr Palker and Mr Palkerson will turn every language into a fence. And due to six types of faces one can choose what material should the fence be made from — from Thin steel rods to   the Black stone blocks. In their simplest appearance Mrs P&P are intended for the solid blank composition in victorian or industrial style. They are quite decent, a bit old-fashioned slab serif and grotesque with closed aperture. All my types have layers. Walker and Palkerson also do. Besides the standard set of symbols, they have 4 add-ons. 1. Alternate glyphs, including unicase ones. 2. Ligatures with A letter. 3. Extra tall small caps. 4. Two-storey ligatures. All this options are intended for the complex composition. The additional letters are rather eccentric as their main function here is to imitate the victorian oddities. Imitate, parody, just not repeat. There are lower-case As and Es in the set in height of small caps and uppercases. They can turn every writing into the unicase.    The lower-case A (as well as uppercase and small caps version of it) has deliberately by my taste grown a ludicrous tail. To compensate it I’ve built all the possible ligatures - ад, ал, ая. There are 35 of this ligatures all together. Take a closer look at the Russian letters D, L, K, Ya from the main set as well as their alternates. The additional glyphs are one more comic than the other — on purpose to imitate (not to repeat!) the victorian set. This sets have lowercase numbers. And small caps numbers as well. What a modern typeface without them. They also have an У-letter with a generously curvy tail. As if before the WWI. The Latin of course has alternates as well. It has letters to make the perfect French sound more like the russian provincial version of it. The tails of Js and Ts can be made a little bit more open — or a little bit closed. My favorite feature here, an invention of a kind - extra tall small caps. It allows to compose logos with the small caped uppercases directly from the keyboard. The small caps of this typefaces are usually much taller than the customary ones. This is the kind of small caps that Palker and Palkerson have. More to that, the strokes’ weight and the letters width are corresponded to the uppercases. Just a ready set for making a logo a la 1913 style. With a unicase, one has to mind! One more trick with the tall small caps is a possibility to make them work like lower uppercases. Their height is just in between of lower- and uppercases. Isn’t it great to have an additional set of uppercase working ponies in stock for the case of emergency. And finally — the trademark of Palkerson family, two-storey ligatures. They are made in the height of uppercases and turn every writing into an ornament or a puzzle of a kind, while at the same time making them much shorter. Each face has 90 of them. Mainly those are twins: CC, BB, DD and so on. ll this things are for the unhasty compositing, even for lettering. Which means that for the things which are not there you always should have Command+Option+O and some patience. Also — among the two storey ligatures one also can find some belvedere villas. All my types are glasses from the one kaleidoscope. The P&Ps family was preliminary part of the victorian set, which already has 21 Cents and Clarendorf - optionally one can add Costro, Gordoni, Handy, Guardy, Surplus, Red Ring, Red Square, Babaev to the list. And also Sklad, Odessa, Dreamland, Romb, Platinum - here, at Letterhead’s, every second one is victorian. All together our typefaces can allow one to set advertisement of any kind, even the trickiest one, and compose everything, from the coffee place’s menu to the antiquarian magazine.