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.

American graphic designer William Addison Dwiggins' (W.A.D. for short) first typefaces were the Metro family, designed from 1927 onward. The project grew out of Dwiggins' dissatisfaction with the new European sans serif typefaces of the day, such as Futura, Erbar, and Kabel, a feeling he expressed in his seminal book Layout in Advertising. Urged by Mergenthaler Linotype to create a solution for the problem, Dwiggins began a professional relationship that would span over the next few decades. The first Metro family typeface to be released was Metroblack, brought to market by Linotype in 1929 (Metroblack #2™ the only one of the two versions that Mergenthaler Linotype eventually put into production which is available in digital form). With more of a humanist quality than the geometric styles popular in Europe at the time, Dwiggins drew what he believed to be the ideal sans serif for headlines and advertising copy. Metroblack has a warmer character than the Modernists' achievements, and the type is full of mannered curves and angled terminals (Metroblack also has an astoundingly beautiful Q). The weights of the Metro family, Metromedium #2™ and Metrolite #2™, were each designed by Mergenthaler Linotype's design office under Dwiggins' supervision. In 2012 Toshi Omagari reworked the Metro family as "Metro Nova" with many weights into a modern type family that even contains the alternate characters from the origin Metro family from Dwiggins. Despite having been created more than three-quarters of a century ago, the Metro family types have aged well, and remain a popular sans serif family. Although spec'd less often than other bestsellers, like Futura, Metro continues to find many diverse uses. The typeface has appeared throughout Europe and the North America for decades in newspapers and magazines, and can even help create a great brand image when used in logos and corporate identity. Dwiggins ranks among the most influential graphic designers and typeface designers of the 20th Century. He has several other quality fonts in the Linotype portfolio, including the serif text faces Electra™ and New Caledonia™, as well as Caravan™, a font of typographic ornaments.

Rufina was as tall and thin as a reed. Elegant but with that distance that well-defined forms seem to impose. Her voice, however, was sweeter, closer, and when she spoke her name, like a slow whisper, one felt like what she had come to say could be read in her image. Rufina’s story can only be told through a detour because her origin does not coincide with her birth. Rufina was born on a Sunday afternoon while her father was drawing black letters on a white background, and her mother was trying to join those same letters to form words that could tell a story. But her origin goes much further back, and that is why she is pierced by a story that precedes her, even though it is not her own. Maybe her origin can be traced back to that autumn night in which that tall man with that distant demeanor ran into that woman with that sweet smile and elegant aspect. He looked at her in such a way that he was trapped by that gaze, even though they found no words to say to each other, and they stayed in silence. Somehow, some words leaked into that gaze because since that moment they were never apart again. Later, after they started talking, projects started coming up and then coexistence and arguments, routines and mismatches. But in that chaos of crossed words in their life together, something was stable through the silence of the gazes. In those gazes, the silent words sustained that indescribable love that they didn’t even try to understand. And in one of those silences, Rufina appeared, when that man told that woman that he needed a text to try out his new font, and she saw him look at her with that same fascination of the first time, and she started to write something with those forms that he was giving her as a gift. Rufina was as tall and thin as a reed, wrote her mother when Rufina was born. Photo (Fragilité): Karin Topolanski / Post: Raw (www.raw.com.uy) - María Pérez Gutiérrez

Milan-based Leftloft studio has produced a third leg to its hit Etica font family: LFT Etica Mono. Meant to be a coder’s go-to font for everyday use as much as a designer’s way to invoke a certain genre, it is part of a broader and more versatile family that already contains almost 80 sans and serif fonts. LFT Etica Mono’s ten weights carry the same modern, recognisable DNA of the Etica family while hewing to the defined requirements of a coding typeface: space, density, distinct forms, and clarity. It uses the same instroke on the ‘c’ and open form of the ‘a’ for which the Etica family is famous, but adds something new in the form of an additional italic style. Monospaced fonts usually incorporate slanted letters as italics, as does LFT Etica Mono, but its default italics have warmer, cursive shapes while the alternate italics are simply slanted. The default ‘a’ is a simplified bowl and stem instead of a two storey shape; the ‘d, f, i, l, t, y’ and others gain an outstroke tail; the ‘e’ is one smooth stroke; and the default ‘k’ is looped. These characters have basic, slanted alternates if the cursive look isn’t desired, and includes a set of arrows and geometric shapes. The monospaced design, by nature, makes the typeface useful in coding and in low readability situations. And how does LFT Etica Mono work from the designer’s perspective? The starting point was the need for a monospaced Etica companion intended for technical applications: captions in graphic layouts, small text, confined or predefined space, and overall tone. Flat terminals and counters maintain the colour and versatility of the original typeface, but choosing between the organic cursive or blunt slanted alphabet will give every layout its own character. Of particular aesthetic interest may be the & and % symbols. Designed to be applied to the common visual environment, the new LFT Etica Mono font family completes a more complex system. One benefit is to give an expressive tone — less serious and more friendly — to something inherently technical, to bytes and bots, to encode the beautiful life.

Mizwinki Display is an all caps sans serif font family that seamlessly blends organic elegance with ornate industrial precission reminiscent of the Art Deco period. The typeface has organic forms that give it a clean decorative and somewhat oriental appeal. This trendsetting trio consists of three font styles, all denoted as MD (Mizwinki Display): MD-Base: This style forms the foundation of the font family, featuring smooth stems and geometric terminals. It blends organic and industrial designs, with letterforms like E, F, W, N, and M crafted from continuous flowing geometry. MD-Ink: Building upon MD-Base, this style introduces spurs and slits, evoking the ornate look synonymous with classic tattoo art letterforms. MD-InkLine: A unique offshoot of MD-Ink, this style features an inline aesthetic that enhances the ornate appeal. Tighter spacing between letterforms allows the glyphs to blend into each other while maintaining legibility within the inline letter silhouettes. Ideal for logos, headlines, packaging, digital ephemera, and apparel, Mizwinki Display is versatile. Despite being a display font, it works well at smaller sizes and is suitable for low-count body copy. Technical Specs: _____________________________________________________ 3 Font Styles / 12 Open Type Features / Extended Latin Character set (Basic Latin; Western, Central and South Eastern European Latin) / Currency Symbols / Punctuation and Parenthesis / Arrows / Basic Mathematical Symbols / Special Symbols / Basic Numerals / Circled Numerals / Numerators and Denominators / Table Figures / Inferiors and Superiors & Fractions Support for 112 Languages: _____________________________________________________ Afrikaans / Akan / Albanian / Asturian / Asu / Bafia / Basque / Bemba / Bena / Breton / Catalan / Chiga / Colognian / Cornish / Croatian / Czech / Danish / Duala / Dutch / Embu / English / Estonian / Ewe / Faroese / Filipino / Finnish / French / Friulian / Fulah / Galician / Ganda / German / Gusii / Hungarian / Icelandic / Igbo / Inari Sami / Indonesian / Irish / Italian / Jola-Fonyi / Kabuverdianu / Kalenjin / Kamba / Kikuyu / Kinyarwanda / Koyraboro Senni / Koyra Chiini / Langi / Latvian / Lingala / Lithuanian / Lower Sorbian / Luba-Katanga / Luo / Luxembourgish / Luyia / Machame / Makhuwa-Meetto / Makonde / Malagasy / Maltese / Manx / Masai / Meru / Metaʼ / Morisyen / Northern Sami / North Ndebele / Norwegian Bokmål / Norwegian Nynorsk / Nuer / Nyankole / Oromo / Polish / Portuguese / Quechua / Romanian / Romansh / Rombo / Rundi / Rwa / Samburu / Sango / Scottish Gaelic / Sena / Serbian / Shambala / Shona / Slovak / Soga / Somali / Spanish / Swahili / Swedish / Swiss German / Taita / Tasawaq / Teso / Turkish / Upper Sorbian / Uzbek (Latin) / Vai / Volapük / Vunjo / Walser / Welsh / Western Frisian / Yoruba / Zarma / Zulu

For everyone wishing for a modern serif that’s as clear and readable as a sans in restrictive digital environments, meet Portada by Veronika Burian and José Scaglione. Sans serifs are commonly used on small screens to save space and carry a modern tone. Serifs may appear fickle and unsteady, pixel grids change from one product to another, and space is at a premium. Portada now provides a serif option for these restrictive digital environments, putting that old trope to rest. The screen has met its serif match. Portada was created from and for the digital world — from e-ink or harsh grids to Retina capability — making it one of the few serifs of its kind. Portada’s text and titling styles were engineered for superlative performance, making great use of sturdy serifs, wide proportions, ample x-height, clear interior negative space, and its subservient personality. After all, words always take priority in text. It’s not all business, though. Portada’s italics contain an artefact of calligraphy in which the directionality of the instrokes and the returning curves of the outstrokes give the family a little unexpected brio. Yet even the terminals are stopped short of flourished self-absorption to retain their digital clarity. When printed these details are downright comforting. Portada’s titling styles enact slight changes while reducing the individual width of each character and keeping the internal space clear. Titling italics have increased expressiveness across a few characters rather than maxing out the personality in each individual glyph. Digital magazines, newspapers, your favourite novel, and all forms of continuous screen reading benefit from Portada’s features. This family can also cover many of the needs developers have: user interface, showing data intensive apps on screen, even one-word directives and dialogs. And, as a free download, an exhaustive set of dark and light icons is included to maintain Portada’s consistent presence, whether as a word or an image. The complete Portada family (eight text styles, ten titling styles, and one icon set) is designed for extensive, clear screen use — a rare serif on equal footing with a sans.

When Candy Script was officially released and in the hands of a few designers, I was in the middle of a three-week trip in North America. After returning to Buenos Aires, I found a few reactions to the font in my inbox. Alongside the congratulatory notes, flattering samples of the face in use, and the inevitable three or four “How do I use it?” emails, one interesting note asked me to consider an italic counterpart. 

I had experimented with a few different angles during the initial brainstorming of the concept but never really thought of Candy Script as an upright italic character set. A few trials confirmed to me that an italic Candy Script would be a bad idea. However, some of these trials showed conceptual promise of their own, so I decided to pursue them and see where they would go. Initially, it seemed a few changes to the Candy Script forms would work well at angles ranging from 18 to 24 degrees, but as the typeface evolved, I realized all the forms had to be modified considerably for a typeface of this style to work as both a digital font and a true emulation of real hand-lettering. Those were the pre-birth contractions of the idea for this font. I called it Sugar Pie because it has a sweet taste similar to Candy Script, mostly due to its round-to-sharp terminal concept. This in turn echoes the concept of the clean brush scripts found in the different film type processes of late 1960s and early 1970s.
 
While Candy Script’s main visual appeal counts on the loops, swashes, and stroke extensions working within a concept of casual form variation, Sugar Pie is artistically a straightforward packaging typeface. Its many ligatures and alternates are just as visually effective as Candy Script’s but in a subtler and less pronounced fashion. The alternates and ligatures in Sugar Pie offer many nice variations on the main character set. Use them to achieve the right degree of softness you desire for your design. Take a look of the How to use PDF file in our gallery section for inspiration.