Introducing Meritocracy, a full-featured handwritten font with tons of alternate characters and OpenType features. My goal with this font was to make you a typeface that will look as much like hand lettering as possible. Using the built-in OpenType pseudo-random contextual alternates and over 300 individually drawn ligatures, you can infuse your typography with personality and variety.** OpenType Features Meritocracy comes with more than 900 glyphs! Specific OpenType features include contextual alternates, stylistic alternates, a second stylistic set for variety, multiple alternate glyphs for many letters (accessed through the glyphs panel), multilingual support (including multiple currency symbols), standard numbers, and seven ampersand styles. It also includes 325+ standard and discretionary ligatures, all of them individually hand-drawn to be different from all other glyphs in the font. These ligatures allow you to give a super-realistic hand-lettered look to your typography. You can write the same word in so many different ways if you combine the default set, stylistic set 01, and standard and discretionary ligatures in different ways. SPECIAL OPENTYPE FEATURE: If you are using OpenType-capable software like Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, or CorelDraw and you have contextual alternates turned on, you can see the letters randomize themselves as you type, mixing from the default character set and stylistic set 01. (You can always turn on contextual alternates after you have already typed your passage and it will randomize all at once, or you can choose to turn off contextual alternates and substitute specific glyphs yourself - I find that if I'm typing a word or two, I prefer to control the individual glyphs myself; if I'm typing a paragraph, I like to use the built-in randomness of the contextual alternates feature). Note that this pseudo-randomization (aka contextual alternate feature) is ON by default in Apple's Pages app and OFF by default in Microsoft Word, but it can be turned on. The OpenType features can be very easily accessed by using OpenType-savvy programs such as Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign. (To access most of these awesome features in Microsoft Word, you'll need to get comfortable with the advanced tab of Word's font menu. If you have questions about this, ask me!) Files included: Meritocracy-Regular.otf Please note: there is only one file for this font. That's the magic of OpenType - all of the alternates, ligatures, etc. are built right into the .otf file! Mail support : julie@upupcreative.com --- Find inspiration (and sneak peeks at my next font-in-progress) on - Instagram: http://instagram.com/julieatupupcreative - Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/upupcreative - Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/upupcreative - My website: http://upupcreative.com --- **PLEASE ENJOY! I can't wait to see what you make with Meritocracy! Feel free to use the #upupcreative and #meritocracyfont tags to show me what you've been up to!**

Worldly Even though it’s a new arrival, FS Brabo has seen the world. Designed by a Brazilian working in London and studying in Belgium under a Dutchman, it’s certainly well-travelled. And it was inspired by the extraordinary archive of early book typefaces at the world-renowned Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, while Fernando Mello was attending Frank Blokland’s Expert class Type Design course at the Plantin Institute of Typography. It was there that Fernando became engrossed in the collection of early metal type, matrices, punches and type samples by figures such as Garamond and Granjon. So much so that he took on the mighty task of developing ‘a beautiful, functional, serifed text font’ of his own. Heroic FS Brabo’s journey from sketch to font family took an epic three years, starting in Antwerp, continuing at Fontsmith in London, and reaching its conclusion back in Fernando’s home city of São Paulo. No wonder Fernando was reminded of another titanic face-off: that of Antwerp’s Roman hero of legend, Silvius Brabo, and the evil ogre, Antigoon. Brabo came to the town’s rescue after the tyrannical giant had been charging ships’ captains extortionate taxes and chopping off the hands of those who refused to pay up. Having finally downed Antigoon after a long and terrible duel, Brabo cut off the giant’s own hand and threw it into the river Scheldt, unwittingly giving the town its name: the Dutch for ‘hand-throw’ is hand werpen. What better way for Fernando to name his literary typeface than after the hero of Antwerp’s oldest tale? The garalde factor FS Brabo is not a revival, but a very much a contemporary, personal interpretation of a garalde – a class of typeface originating in the 16th century that includes Bembo, Garamond and Plantin, with characteristically rounded serifs and moderate contrast between strokes. Brabo’s ‘ct’ and ‘st’ ligatures, upper-case italic swashes and contextual ending ligatures – ‘as’, ‘is’, ‘us’ – all preserve the beauty and character of traditional typefaces, but its serifs are chunkier than a garalde. Their sharp cuts and squared edges give them a crispness at text sizes, helping to bring a beautifully bookish personality to hardworking modern applications. A workhorse with pedigree It may give the appearance of a simple, four-weight typeface, but FS Brabo has hidden depths beneath its simplicity and beauty. OpenType features such as cap italic swashes, contextual ending swashes – programmed only to appear at the end of words – and stylistic alternatives make this a complete and well-equipped typeface. Comprehensive testing was carried out at text and display sizes, too, to prevent counters from filling in. All of which makes FS Brabo a very modern take on a traditional workhorse serif typeface: colourful and versatile enough to adorn not just editorial projects but also signage, advertising and logotypes.

Almost a half of a millennium after being mistaken for the original 4th century Gothic alphabet and falsely labeled "barbaric" by the European Renaissance, the blackletter alphabet was still flourishing exclusively in early 20th century Germany, not only as an ode to Gutenberg and the country's rich printing history, but also as a continuous evolution, taking on new shapes and textures influenced by almost every other form of alphabet available. Blackletter would continue to go strong in Germany until just before the second World War, when it died a political death at the height of its hybridization. For almost 50 years after the war, blackletter was very rarely used in a prominent manner, but it continued to be seen sparely in a variety of settings, almost as a subliminal reminder of western civilization's first printed letters; on certificates and official documents of all kinds, religious publications, holiday cards and posters, to name a few. In the early 21st century, blackletter type has been appearing sporadically on visible media, but as of late 2005, it is not known how long the renewed interest will last, or even whether or not it will catch on at all. The last few years before World War II were arguably the most fascinating and creative in modern blackletter design. During those years, and as demonstrated with the grid-based Leather font, the geometric sans serif was influencing the blackletter forms, taking them away from their previous Jugendstil (Art Nouveau) hybridizations. Blackhaus is a digitization and elaborate expansion of a typeface called Kursachsen Auszeichnung, designed in 1937 by Peterpaul Weiss for the Schriftguss foundry in Dresden. This is one of very few designs from that time attempting to infuse more Bauhaus than Jugendstil into the Blackletter forms. This is why we used a concatenation of the words blackletter and Bauhaus to name this face. The result of injecting Bauhaus elements into blackletter turned out to be a typeface that is very legible and usable in modern settings, while at the same time harking back to the historical forms of early printing. The original 1937 design was just one typeface of basic letters and numbers. After digitizing and expanding it, we developed a lighter version, then added a few alternates to both weights. The Rough style came as a mechanically-grunged afterthought, due to current user demand for such treatment. Having the flexibility of 2 weights and many alternates of a blackletter typeface is not a very common find in digital fonts. More specifically, having the flexibility of 2 weights and alternates of a 20th century blackletter typeface is almost unheard of in digital fonts. So the Blackhaus family can be quite useful and versatile in an imaginative designer's hands.

Silent films evoke a sense of nostalgia that is as timeless as the era itself. While the stars of silent cinema may have faded into the past, their influence is still felt in modern-day art, fashion, and design. Silentina is a typeface that embodies the spirit of the silent film era, inspired by the intertitles that were used to convey crucial information to audiences during these films. Buster Keaton, Mary Pickford, Clara Bow, and Rudolph Valentino all graced the silver screen with their emotive faces during the silent film era. These icons used their expressions to convey a range of emotions that captivated audiences and made them fall in love with the magic of cinema. Intertitles, the brief messages that would appear on-screen during the film, were just as essential in conveying information to moviegoers. Silentina is a typeface that pays homage to the unsung heroes of the silent film era—the intertitles. It channels the glitz and glamour of the roaring twenties, taking us back to a time of flapper dresses, jazz music, and speakeasies. But Silentina isn’t just a typeface—it’s a portal to another era. It transports us to a time when movies were an escape from reality, and each trip to the cinema was a chance to lose ourselves in a world of adventure and romance. With Silentina, you can project your message in the same way that the stars of silent cinema projected theirs. This typeface captures the essence of a bygone era, bringing it to life in the modern world. Use it to convey plot information, set the scene, or add a touch of vintage charm to your design. Whatever your message, Silentina will help you communicate it in the same glitzy way as the intertitles of the silent film era. Most Latin-based European writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aromanian, Aymara, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kurdish (Latin), Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Moldovan, Montenegrin, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Ossetian (Latin), Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Sami, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wolof, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec Zulu and Zuni.

Refinery is the newest font in the Evanston Collection of square typefaces. With a similar capital structure to Tavern and Alehouse, Refinery includes both lowercase and small caps, making it an ideal typeface for paragraph text settings. It also comes in a wide array of weights and widths, with 85 font files in total. DESIGN Refinery has it’s roots in early 20th century signage and saloon typography, but has been modernized - even future-ized - to fit the 21st century digital landscape. The design was aimed at providing a type family that could work in many modern design fields, from sports, tech and military to gaming, HUD, virtual reality and augmented reality. ENGINEERING Essentially. Refinery is a simple mono-linear square design has been expertly refined into an easy-reading sans serif typeface. It was designed to be used in both display and text settings. From hairline to black in ultra-narrow or extended, the wide array of weight and width options makes it easy to find the right font for each text need. SPECS Refinery not only includes 85 font files, but each one include a wide array of Opentype Extras that allow even further customization. • Stylistic Alternatives: Letters A W Y have a styling variation that rounds the pointed apex into a square curve. The S and 2 variation straightens the spine, making all curves in the alphabet read as 90º angles. • Small Capitals: A shortened version of the capitals for alternate header settings. • Titling Alternatives: In this typeface, this feature turns on lifted small caps. Take the small capitals, raise them to level with capitals and underline at the baseline. When multiple lowercase or small capital letters are typed in a row, the underlines connect, creating unique ligatures. • Figures: There are different figure styles for different text needs. Options include, proportional lining, tabular lining (for math), old style and small capitals. • Discretionary Ligatures: A little funk to this otherwise serious typeface. Letters with a long baseline or cap height stem - F, L, T - get elongated to hug a small capital vowel. Other ligatures include Co. and No. • Catchwords: These are common words that bring emphasis to a design. In English these words include ‘and’ ‘as’ ‘by’ ‘in’ ‘of’ ‘the’ ‘to’ ‘when’, among others. Refinery also includes multilingual catchwords of ‘el’ ‘la’ ‘oder’ ‘go’ ‘para’ ‘pour’ ‘und’ ‘y’, among others. For the full list, please check out the specimen images. EXTRAS To round the typeface off, a set of over 150 ornaments, icons, arrows, patterns and line breaks is included to provide complimentary graphics. These can be found in the Ornaments labelled font, it is recommended to use the Glyphs panel to select which text glyph is needed.

Irrlicht is based on C. H. Kleukens’ 1923 typeface Judith Type . Whilst Dunkle Irrlicht is a fairly faithful rendition and extension of Kleukens’ typeface, the Licht style was initially added as a stand-alone stencil version; yet, the two styles work perfectly together – for different nuances, for emphasis or simply stacked/layered. Irrlicht is equipped with upper- and lowercase ligatures, contextual and stylistic alternates, fractions, superior and inferior figures, extended language support and a few extra goodies. Additional information – How Irrlicht came to life Christian Heinrich Kleukens cut his Judith Type in 1923, at the peak of German expressionism, exclusively for publications with the Ernst-Ludwig-Press, such as a limited series of biblical prints – the first being the Book of Judith , hence the original’s name. I stumbled upon this typeface a couple of years ago in a nice little 1930 booklet of the Gutenberg-Gesellschaft and was struck by its forceful darkness on paper and its seemingly simple, crude letterforms. The lack of a long-ſ in the final version of Judith Type – quite unusual for a German typeface of that time – adds to this feel of crudeness and spontaneity*. Judith Type seemed to me like a semi-blackletter cousin of Rudolf Koch’s typeface Neuland (cast in the same year). Besides its apparent affinity with expressionism, it reflects a lot of that deeply spiritual craftsmanship of the era – much like Neuland. A few months later, when I was working on a stencil project and looking for a typeface that could be cut into thin wooden plates easily, I remembered those dark, sharp letters that seemed to be lacking any curves at all. After enlarging a few letters and tracing them by hand, the whole set was redrawn digitally, using only straight lines. As for spacing, the goal was to keep the letters tight but to avoid touching characters – without ironing out all the original’s tension and rhythm. Deliberate kerning, subtle contextual alternates and ligatures help to deal with critical glyph combinations. Two additional versions were developed: a stencil version with open counters and, in reference to a popular style of the 1920s and inspired by dry, cracked wood, an inline version. These two additional styles were later merged into one font – Lichte** Irrlicht was born. — AARHAUS * Consequently, the original typeface’s German eszett is simply a ligature of the “round s” and standard z . In some of his publications, Kleukens dispenses with using eszett altogether and sets double s instead. Irrlicht , however, does feature a more common eszett (ß); the original, among other more faithful letter forms, can be accessed via the stylistic sets feature ** licht – literally bright – being the German term for inline typefaces – not to be confused with leicht ( light )

Worldly Even though it’s a new arrival, FS Brabo has seen the world. Designed by a Brazilian working in London and studying in Belgium under a Dutchman, it’s certainly well-travelled. And it was inspired by the extraordinary archive of early book typefaces at the world-renowned Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, while Fernando Mello was attending Frank Blokland’s Expert class Type Design course at the Plantin Institute of Typography. It was there that Fernando became engrossed in the collection of early metal type, matrices, punches and type samples by figures such as Garamond and Granjon. So much so that he took on the mighty task of developing ‘a beautiful, functional, serifed text font’ of his own. Heroic FS Brabo’s journey from sketch to font family took an epic three years, starting in Antwerp, continuing at Fontsmith in London, and reaching its conclusion back in Fernando’s home city of São Paulo. No wonder Fernando was reminded of another titanic face-off: that of Antwerp’s Roman hero of legend, Silvius Brabo, and the evil ogre, Antigoon. Brabo came to the town’s rescue after the tyrannical giant had been charging ships’ captains extortionate taxes and chopping off the hands of those who refused to pay up. Having finally downed Antigoon after a long and terrible duel, Brabo cut off the giant’s own hand and threw it into the river Scheldt, unwittingly giving the town its name: the Dutch for ‘hand-throw’ is hand werpen. What better way for Fernando to name his literary typeface than after the hero of Antwerp’s oldest tale? The garalde factor FS Brabo is not a revival, but a very much a contemporary, personal interpretation of a garalde – a class of typeface originating in the 16th century that includes Bembo, Garamond and Plantin, with characteristically rounded serifs and moderate contrast between strokes. Brabo’s ‘ct’ and ‘st’ ligatures, upper-case italic swashes and contextual ending ligatures – ‘as’, ‘is’, ‘us’ – all preserve the beauty and character of traditional typefaces, but its serifs are chunkier than a garalde. Their sharp cuts and squared edges give them a crispness at text sizes, helping to bring a beautifully bookish personality to hardworking modern applications. A workhorse with pedigree It may give the appearance of a simple, four-weight typeface, but FS Brabo has hidden depths beneath its simplicity and beauty. OpenType features such as cap italic swashes, contextual ending swashes – programmed only to appear at the end of words – and stylistic alternatives make this a complete and well-equipped typeface. Comprehensive testing was carried out at text and display sizes, too, to prevent counters from filling in. All of which makes FS Brabo a very modern take on a traditional workhorse serif typeface: colourful and versatile enough to adorn not just editorial projects but also signage, advertising and logotypes.

Type Maestro is an exquisite ligature serif font that exudes creativity and elegance. With over 100 meticulously crafted ligatures, this font is the perfect choice for designers looking to elevate their projects to new heights. One of the key features of Type Maestro is its extensive language support, boasting compatibility with 87 different languages. This makes it an incredibly versatile font that can be used for a wide range of projects, no matter where your audience is located. But what truly sets Type Maestro apart are its alternate glyphs. These unique characters add a touch of individuality and personality to your text, allowing you to create truly one-of-a-kind designs. Whether you're designing a logo, a website, or a social media post, Type Maestro has the flexibility and style to help you stand out from the crowd. Language Support : Afrikaans, Albanian, Asu, Basque, Bemba, Bena, Breton, Chiga, Colognian, Cornish, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Embu, English, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Galician, Ganda, German, Gusi,i Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jola-Fonyi, Kabuverdianu, Kalenjin, Kamba, Kikuyu, Kinyarwanda, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lower Sorbian, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Maltese, Manx, Meru, Morisyen, North Ndebele, Norwegian, Bokmål, Norwegian, Nynorsk, Nyankole, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Rwa, Samburu, Sango, Sangu, Scottish, Gaelic, Sena, Shambala, Shona, Slovak, Soga, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Swiss, German, Taita, Teso, Turkish, Upper, Sorbian, Uzbek (Latin), Volapük, Vunjo, Walser, Welsh, Western Frisian, Zulu Ligatures : IS, FO, OD, FA, TY, EX, NN, EY, SS, LL, FU, US, UT, AS, AN, AM, CI, LO, ES, RO, ET, TE, CK, OH, OO, OE, OC, KO, KE, KC, CH, SE, EA, UR, RS, KS, TH, TU, TT, TK, TL, HE, RG, EP, ER, RE, RC, LE, ND, ED, OF, HA, EN, CT, ST, NT, ON, ME, MO, NG, NC, UG, UC, OU, GH, OR, OP, EE, YO, VE, IT, WE, TI, VO, WO, SA, MA, OL, VA, YP, YR, OX, XO, BA, OT, TO, BE, RU, KU, TW, EN, NT, FAS, FAST, CKS, OOD, FOOD, FOO, TEE, TOR, TOP, TWE, NTY, TYP, OUT, UST, URS, WAS, THE, WES, EST, EEN, ERS, EAS, LES, ENT, FOR, OUG, ERE, TER, YOU, VER, HER, THER, THA, AND, ITH, THI, MENT, WERE, WER, ROM, THE, ERG, ERE, ERC, ERU, ERO, NTH, FOU, HRO, HRE, HRC, HRU, TWO, GHT, OUR, OUP, STO, VEN, ORT, MEN How to access alternate glyphs? To access alternate glyphs in Adobe InDesign or Illustrator, choose Window Type & Tables Glyphs In Photoshop, choose Window Glyphs. In the panel that opens, click the Show menu and choose Alternates for Selection. Double-click an alternate's thumbnail to swap them out. Mock ups and backgrounds used are not included. Thank you! Enjoy!

Babylon was a civilisation that stretched from Bagdad to the Persian Gulf. There is an Old and new Babylonia, the era of Babylon civilization and the biblical Babylon. The oldest scriptures to be found since the rise of civilisation are Babylonic. The Christian, the Jewish and the Arabic culture find its origin in the Middle East. And share more or less the same history, the same roots and DNA. One people, but in reality a melting pot of close related cultures whom could not be more far apart, hostile and suspicious towards each other. An eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. One could say this disagreement is still alive today and has deeply infected all of our systems. Beyond Babylon is sculpted after Hebrew, Arabic character style elements in a European writing. It questions what happened after the great Babylonic confusion. Did the words finally come across? Did they realize the distant and gap was maybe smaller than expected. This typeface is related to my former character Eurabia. As an artist I like to play with contradictions. Use opposite elements and mould them in to one understandable piece and in addition a thought to chew on. Otherwise the experimental ore shape lovin' typeface user could be very happy with an addition feature to the existing characters. One option more to express your selves in writing. Also this typeface is really suitable for theme writing or advertising. ----------- Babylon war eine Zivilisation die sich von Bagdad bis zum Persischen Golf erstreckte. Es gibt das alte und das neue Babylon, die Ära der Babylon Zivilisation und das biblische Babylon. Die ältesten Schriften, welche seit dem Aufstieg der Zivilisation gefunden wurden, sind babylonisch. Die Christen, die Juden und die arabische Kultur finden ihren Ursprung im Mittleren Osten. Sie teilen mehr oder weniger die gleiche Geschichte, die gleichen Wurzeln und DNA: Ein Volk. Aber in Wirklichkeit waren sie ein Schmelztiegel aus eng verwandten Kulturen, welche sich nicht ferner sein könnten: feindselig und misstrauisch zueinander. Auge um Auge, Zahn um Zahn. Man könnte behaupten, diese Unstimmigkeit bestehe noch heute und hätte all unsere Systeme stark infiziert. Beyond Babylon ist eine europäische Schrift, geformt nach hebräischen und arabischen Stilelementen der Zeichen. Sie hinterfragt die Geschehnisse nach der der Babylonischen Sprachverwirrung. Kamen die Worte endlich an? Haben sie realisiert, dass die Weite des Spalts zwischen ihnen vielleicht geringer war als erwartet. Diese Schrift ist verwandt mit meinen vorigen Zeichen der Eurabia. Als Künstlerin mag ich es mit Widersprüchen zu spielen, gegensätzliche Elemente zu einem vernehmbaren Ganzen zu verschmelzen und einen kniffligen Gedanken zu erzeugen. Andererseits könnte der experimentelle oder formenverliebte Nutzer sehr glücklich über eine zusätzliche Funktion der bestehenden Zeichen sein. Eine weite Möglichkeit sich im Schreiben auszudrücken. Diese Schrift ist auch für Werbung sehr geeignet.

Eclectic FS Siena is a typeface with history, and not just in the sense of having its origins in classical Roman lettering. Fontsmith founder Jason Smith first committed it to tracing paper while still at college, instinctively redrawing letterforms based on Hermann Zapf’s Optima according to ‘what felt right’. When Krista Radoeva took up the challenge to edit and extend the typeface, she and Jason were determined to preserve its subtly nonconformist and eclectic spirit. Like a great dish, there are individual components throughout the character set that all add flavour, and need to be balanced in order to work together. The smooth connection of the ‘h’ ‘m’ ‘n’ and ‘r’ contrasts with the corners of the ‘b’ and ‘p’. The instantly recognisable double-storey ‘a’ – the starting point of the design – contrasts with the single-storey ‘g’ and the more cursive ‘y’. And only certain characters – ‘k’, ‘w’, ‘v’ and ‘x’ in the lowercase and ‘K’, ‘V’, ‘W’, ‘X’ and ‘Y’ in the caps – have curved strokes. Transitional FS Siena is a contrasted sans-serif typeface, blending classical elegance and modern simplicity. Its construction and proportions are descended from classical broad-nib calligraphy and humanist typefaces, with a high contrast between the thick and thin strokes. The angle of the contrast, though, is vertical, more in the character of pointed-nib calligraphy and modernist typefaces. This vertical stress helps to give FS Siena a strong, cultured presence on the page. Idiosyncratic italics The italics for FS Siena were developed by Krista to complement the roman upper and lower-case alphabets first drawn by Jason. Many of the letterforms are built differently to their roman counterparts: there’s a single-tier ‘a’, a looped ‘k’ and connections more towards the middle of stems, such as in the ‘m’, ‘n’ and ‘u’. These distinctions, along with generally much narrower forms than the roman, give the italics extra emphasis within body copy, where the two are side-by-side. In editorial, especially, the combination can be powerful. To cap it all… In his original draft of the typeface, Jason found inspiration in Roman square capitals of the kind most famously found on Trajan’s Column in Rome. In keeping with those ancient inscriptions, he intended the capitals of FS Siena to also work in all-upper-case text, in logotypes for luxury consumer brands and property developments, for example. A little added space between the upper-case letters lets the capitals maintain their poise in a caps-only setting, while still allowing them to work alongside the lower-case letterforms. The caps-only setting also triggers a feature called case punctuation, which adapts hyphens, brackets and other punctuation to complement the all-caps text.

This is a cute story about a mother and her son. :) About a decade ago my own mother got very interested in my work. She used to say my letters had so many swirls and dazzling swashes, and suggested my job seemed to be very fun. She wondered if she could ever try to make her own alphabet... Well, she is a civil engineer and a maths teacher, and appeared to be a little tired of exact sciences... I remember answering this, while she was listening with her typical tender look: -"Mamá... While type-design may be a really enjoyable thing to do, it also involves having a great eye and knowledge about the history of letters: nice curves and shapes require a meticulous study and, like it happens in many fields, practice makes perfect"-. Well, she raised her eyebrows at me. -"and so what?"- She didn't have any experience neither in the field of art nor in the field of graphic design so, I told her that if she really wanted to get into this she should borrow some of my calligraphic books from my beloved shelves in my office. So... she did. Some weeks after that, she came to me with many sketches made with pencils and markers: some letters where very nice and unique while others naturally needed some work. I remember she added ball terminals to all of her letters (even if they didn't need them) because that was one of the rules she imposed. After some back and forth, we had the basis for what would be today, ten years later, the seed of this lovely font Girasol. Her proposal was nice, something I was not accustomed to do, that’s why many years later I decided to watch it with fresh new eyes and finished it. While she was in charge of making the lowercase letters, I helped with the uppercase and also added my hallmark in the alternates, already seen in others of my expressive fonts. The result is an upright decorative font that follows the behavior of the copperplate nib with a naive touch that makes it really cute and useful for a wide range of products. Many alternates per glyph make Girasol a very fun to use font which will delight you. Above posters are a proof of that! This font is a gift for my mother, Susana, who, in spite of her exacts academic background, taught me that beauty can also be found in the imperfect. 1 NOTES (1) In my fonts I'm always in seek of the perfect curve. When I designed Erotica and Dream Script, I read about Fibonacci’s spirals!

The Eskapade font family is the result of Alisa Nowak’s research into Roman and German blackletter forms, mainly Fraktur letters. The idea was to adapt these broken forms into a contemporary family instead of creating a faithful revival of a historical typeface. On one hand, the ten normal Eskapade styles are conceived for continuous text in books and magazines with good legibility in smaller sizes. On the other hand, the six angled Eskapade Fraktur styles capture the reader’s attention in headlines with its mixture of round and straight forms as seen in ‘e’, ‘g’, and ‘o’. Eskapade works exceptionally well for branding, logotypes, and visual identities, for editorials like magazines, fanzines, or posters, and for packaging. Eskapade roman adopts a humanist structure, but is more condensed than other oldstyle serifs. The reason behind this stems from the goal of closely resembling the Fraktur style to create harmony in mixed text settings. Legibility is enhanced by its low contrast between thick and thin strokes and its tall x-height. Eskapade offers an airy and light typographic colour with its smooth design. Eskapade italic is based on the Cancellaresca script and shows some particularities in its condensed and round forms. This structure also provided the base for Eskapade Fraktur italic. Eskapade Fraktur is more contrasted and slightly bolder than the usual darkness of a regular weight. The innovative Eskapade Fraktur italic, equally based on the Cancellaresca script previously mentioned, is secondarily influenced by the Sütterlin forms — an unique script practiced in Germany in the vanishingly short period between 1915 and 1941. The new ornaments are also hybrid Sütterlin forms to fit with the smooth roman styles. Although there are many Fraktur-style typefaces available today, they usually lack italics, and their italics are usually slanted uprights rather than proper italics. This motivated extensive experimentation with the italic Fraktur shapes and resulted in Eskapade Fraktur’s unusual and interesting solutions. In addition to standard capitals, it offers a second set of more decorative capitals with double-stroke lines to intensify creative application and encourage experimental use. The Thin and Black Fraktur styles are meant for display sizes (headlines, posters, branding, and signage). A typeface with this much tension needs to keep a good harmony between strokes and counters, so Eskapade Black has amplified inktraps and a more dynamic structure seen in the contrast between straight and round forms. These qualities make the family bolder and more enticing, especially with the included uppercase alternates. The Fraktur’s black weights are strident, refusing to let the white of the paper win the tug-of-war. It also won’t give away its secrets: Is it modern or historic, edgy or amicable, beguiling ornamentation or brutish presentation? That all depends on how the radically expanded Eskapade family is used, but its 16 fonts certainly aren’t tame.