❧ Useful links: Luther’s Manuscripts at the UNESCO Memory of the World at Google Arts and Culture Martin Luther font on Kickstarter (with Film about the creation) Each letter of the Martin Luther font is strictly based on original samples found in Martin Luther’s 500 year old handwritten manuscripts. Letters that occur more often for example vowels have two or more different versions stored in the font. (➶ Figure 4) These alternative forms are exchanged automatically by the font as you type, and create a vivid look that comes close to actual handwriting. The font avoids that two identical letters are placed next to each other like, for example the two “o” in the word “look”. ➸ What Historic Sources is the Font based on? Two historic documents were used to base the font on. The notes Luther took before giving his speech in Worms in 1521 and a 6 page letter he wrote immediately after to Emperor Charles V., summarising his speech (➶ Figure 2). Both documents have been added to the UNESCO “Memory of the World” and can be seen at the Google Arts and Culture website. ➸ The Creation of a Handwriting Font The creation of a handwriting font is very different from the creation of a regular font. Harald Geisler has specialised in recreating handwriting in preceding projects with Albert Einstein’s, Sigmund Freud’s and his own handwriting. His experience working with Archives and Museums has gone into this project. First Geisler analyses the movement in the writing to understand how each letter is drawn. This involves partially learning how to write like a person. In this process not the outlines of the sample are reproduced but the original movement path of the handwriting (➶ Figure 3). In a second step width and contrast is added to reproduce Martin Luther’s characteristic impetus and the writing tools used at the time. (Link: Youtube Playlist showcasing the creation of individual letters) How about signs that can’t be found in archives? Some Glyphs can not be found in 500 year old manuscripts, for example the @-sign. Towards the end of the creation one collects a profund amount of details about how a writer moves on paper and addresses certain tasks moving the pen. Keeping this knowledge in mind an improvisation can be based on similar letter forms. For example the @ sign is based on of the movement of a lowercase a and parenthesis. ➸ Features of the Martin Luther font ❶ Extensive Documentation of the creation of the font, including high quality reproduction of the used manuscripts. ❷ Additional texts from Historian Dr. Henning Jürgens and Palaeographer (and Luther handwriting expert) Prof. Ulrich Bubenheimer ❸ Alternating Letters - in handwriting every word looks a bit different. To avoid that two identical letterforms are placed next to each other (for example in the word look) the font actively changes between different versions of letters as you type. ❹ Ligatures - characteristic writing forms when two letters are combined (for example “ct”) (➶ Figure 5) ❺ Terminal Letterforms - renders a special letterform when letter is at the end of a word. (➶ Figure 8) ❻ ‘’’Initial and Medial Letterforms''' - some letterforms are different when placed in the beginning or middle of a word, for example the lowercase s. ❼ Luther Rose - is a seal Luther used to authorise his correspondence. Today it is a widely recognized symbol for Luther. When you enter the numbers of Luthers year of birth and death 14831546 using the Martin Luther PRO font, it will render a stylised version of the Luther Rose. (➶ Figure 7) ❽ Historic letter-forms - letter-forms that are specific to medieval writing around 1500. For example the long-s or h with a loop at the bottom. (➶ Figure 6) ⚑ Multi language support - see the technical information tab for a full list of supported languages. (➶ Figure 11) ➸ The different Styles explained ❋ Martin Luther PRO - this includes all features listed above and is geared towards writing texts that are more readable today. It features alternating letters to create a natural handwriting look as well as two stylistic sets accessible through the OpenType menu. Historic forms are available through the glyph picker. ❋ Martin Luther Historic - this font creates a historically correct reproduction (i.e. with long-s) of Luther’s medieval latin handwriting. It features alternating letters to create a natural handwriting look as well as two stylistic sets accessible through the OpenType menu. ❋ Martin Luther Expert-1 - Dedicated access to the first set of letters only. ❋ Martin Luther Expert-2 - Dedicated access to the second set of letters only. ❈❈❈ Family Pack - recieve all fonts at a discounted price. ❈❈❈ ➸ Kickstarter The creation and development of the Martin Luther font was financed by 500 supporters on ➸Kickstarter.

In 1955 the Czech State Department of Culture, which was then in charge of all the publishing houses, organised a competition amongst printing houses and generally all book businesses for the design of a newspaper typeface. The motivation for this contest was obvious: the situation in the printing presses was appalling, with very little quality fonts existing and financial resources being too scarce to permit the purchase of type abroad. The conditions to be met by the typeface were strictly defined, and far more constrained than the ones applied to regular typefaces designed for books. A number of parameters needed to be considered, including the pressure of the printing presses and the quality of the thin newspaper ink that would have smothered any delicate strokes. Rough drafts of type designs for the competition were submitted by Vratislav Hejzl, Stanislav Marso, Frantisek Novak, Frantisek Panek, Jiri Petr, Jindrich Posekany, and the team of Stanislav Duda, Karel Misek and Josef Tyfa. The committee published its comments and corrections of the designs, and asked the designers to draw the final drafts. The winner was unambiguous — the members of the committee unanimously agreed to award Stanislav Marso’s design the first prize. His typeface was cast by Grafotechna (a state-owned enterprise) for setting with line-composing machines and also in larger sizes for hand-setting. Regular, bold, and bold condensed cuts were produced, and the face was named Public. In 2003 we decided to digitise the typeface. Drawings of the regular and italic cuts at the size of approximatively 3,5 cicero (43 pt) were used as templates for scanning. Those originals covered the complete set of caps except for the U, the lowercase, numerals, and sloped ampersand. The bold and condensed bold cuts were found in an original specimen book of the Rude Pravo newspaper printing press. These specimens included a dot, acute, colon, semicolon, hyphens, exclamation and question marks, asterisk, parentheses, square brackets, cross, section sign, and ampersand. After the regular cut was drafted, we began to modify it. All the uppercase letters were fine-tuned, the crossbar of the A was raised, E, F, and H were narrowed, L and R were significantly broadened, and the angle of the leg and arm of the K were adjusted. The vertex of the M now rests on the baseline, making the glyph broader. The apex of the N is narrower, resulting in a more regular glyph. The tail of Q was made more decorative; the uppercase S lost its implied serifs. The lowercase ascenders and descenders were slightly extended. Corrections on the lower case a were more significant, its waist being lowered in order to improve its colour and light. The top of the f was redrawn, the loop of lowercase g now has a squarer character. The diagonals of the lowercase k were harmonised with the uppercase K. The t has a more open and longer terminal, and the tail of the y matches its overall construction. Numerals are generally better proportioned. Italics have been thoroughly redrawn, and in general their slope is lessened by approximatively 2–3 degrees. The italic upper case is more consistent with the regular cut. Unlike the original, the tail of the K is not curved, and the Z is not calligraphic. The italic lower case is even further removed from the original. This concerns specifically the bottom finials of the c and e, the top of the f, the descender of the j, the serif of the k, a heavier ear on the r, a more open t, a broader v and w, a different x, and, again, a non-calligraphic z. Originally the bold cut conformed even more to the superellipse shape than the regular one, since all the glyphs had to be fitted to the same width. We have redrawn the bold cut to provide a better match with the regular. This means its shapes have become generally broader, also noticeably darker. Medium and Semibold weights were also interpolated, with a colour similar to the original bold cut. The condensed variants’ width is 85 percent of the original. The design of the Bold Condensed weights was optimised for the setting of headlines, while the lighter ones are suited for normal condensed settings. All the OpenType fonts include small caps, numerals, fractions, ligatures, and expert glyphs, conforming to the Suitcase Standard set. Over half a century of consistent quality ensures perfect legibility even in adverse printing conditions and on poor quality paper. RePublic is an exquisite newspaper and magazine type, which is equally well suited as a contemporary book face.

TT Firs Neue useful links: Specimen | Graphic presentation | Customization options TT Firs Neue is reborn! We have rethought the font to introduce the next-generation typeface. After analyzing each contour and graphic element, we rebuilt the font, preserving its best features while making any necessary adjustments. We have created a flawless and modern sans serif using the new technical capabilities of the studio. TT Firs Neue is a Scandinavian sans serif that combines expressive graphic elements with the versatility of use. In the latest 2023 edition, the font's display elements have become even more attractive, while the overall font balance has also been improved. This is the result of the visual research we did before working on the update. Here is what has changed. The visual elements of the font are now logically coherent. We got rid of the ones that did not suit the font's concept and kept the most attractive ones. The changes affected letters with diagonal strokes "M, N, И", and figures "2, 3, 6, 9". All round characters' shapes have been standardized for all font styles. In the previous version, all glyphs looked different: more square or oval, depending on the font's weight. We made the shapes consistent for the font to feel more integral. Glyphs containing bowls have also changed. We have worked on the balance, altering the height and shape of the bowls. Like rounded ones, we aspired to make the glyphs more balanced for all font styles. The shapes of the letters "J, M, N, S, W, З, И" and Black font style characters have changed. The individuality of these glyphs was slightly different from the whole set, which became apparent in larger sizes. We have improved the shapes and made them more suitable for the font's style. Letters with diagonal strokes and triangular glyphs, such as "A, V, Y, D". We have brought the characters to a consistent logic in their shapes by refining the angles and weight of diagonals in different font styles. The glyphs' terminals follow the same logic in the new version. We have preserved and perfected the old shapes. Ligatures and stylistic sets have been updated entirely and expanded. We have researched Scandinavian languages and designed ligatures and diacritical sets that would definitely be useful for designers. We have redesigned diacritical marks, figures, and punctuation marks. Now all characters follow the same logic and contribute to a well-balanced impression of the font. The character set in each font style has been increased from 934 to 1719, and the number of OpenType features—from 24 to 40. The new font includes 23 font styles: 11 roman, 11 italic, and 1 variable font. The variable font has also become a significant technological advancement for TT Firs Neue. We retained a warm sentiment towards TT Firs Neue's previous success while redesigning the font and implementing substantial alterations. The 2023 font has been developed according to new technical standards that have become significantly higher in the past 5 years. TT Firs Neue is a font well-suited for a wide range of contexts. It can be used for headings, text fragments, visual merchandising and building decoration, and the web. The font is visually aesthetic on podcast and video covers and is an ideal choice for packaging design and brand identity. TT Firs Neue OpenType features: aalt, ccmp, locl, subs, sinf, sups, numr, dnom, frac, ordn, tnum, onum, lnum, pnum, case, dlig, liga, c2sc, smcp, ss01, ss02, ss03, ss04, ss05, ss06, ss07, ss08, ss09, ss10, ss11, ss12, ss13, ss14, ss15, ss16, ss17, ss18, ss19, ss20, calt. TT Firs Neue language support: English, Albanian, Basque, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luxembourgish, Maltese, Moldavian (lat), Montenegrin (lat), Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Serbian (lat), Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Swiss German, Valencian, Azerbaijani, Kazakh (lat), Turkish, Uzbek (lat), Acehnese, Banjar, Betawi, Bislama, Boholano, Cebuano, Chamorro, Fijian, Filipino, Hiri Motu, Ilocano, Indonesian, Javanese, Khasi, Malay, Marshallese, Minangkabau, Nauruan, Nias, Palauan, Rohingya, Salar, Samoan, Sasak, Sundanese, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Uyghur, Afar, Asu, Aymara, Bemba, Bena, Chichewa, Chiga, Embu, Gikuyu, Gusii, Jola-Fonyi, Kabuverdianu, Kalenjin, Kamba, Kikuyu, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kongo, Luba-Kasai, Luganda, Luo, Luyia, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Mauritian Creole, Meru, Morisyen, Ndebele, Nyankole, Oromo, Rombo, Rundi, Rwa, Samburu, Sango, Sangu, Sena, Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Shona, Soga, Somali, Sotho, Swahili, Swazi, Taita, Teso, Tsonga, Tswana, Vunjo, Wolof, Xhosa, Zulu, Ganda, Maori, Alsatian, Aragonese, Arumanian, Asturian, Belarusian (lat), Bosnian (lat), Breton, Bulgarian (lat), Colognian, Cornish, Corsican, Esperanto, Faroese, Frisian, Friulian, Gaelic, Gagauz (lat), Galician, Interlingua, Judaeo-Spanish, Karaim (lat), Kashubian, Ladin, Leonese, Manx, Occitan, Rheto-Romance, Romansh, Scots, Silesian, Sorbian, Vastese, Volapük, Võro, Walloon, Walser, Welsh, Karakalpak (lat), Kurdish (lat), Talysh (lat), Tsakhur (Azerbaijan), Turkmen (lat), Zaza, Aleut (lat), Cree, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Innu-aimun, Lakota, Karachay-Balkar (lat), Karelian, Livvi-Karelian, Ludic, Tatar, Vepsian, Guarani, Nahuatl, Quechua, Russian, Belarusian (cyr), Bosnian (cyr), Bulgarian (cyr), Macedonian, Serbian (cyr), Ukrainian, Kazakh (cyr), Kirghiz, Tadzhik, Turkmen (cyr), Uzbek (cyr), Lezgian, Abazin, Agul, Archi, Avar, Dargwa, Ingush, Kabardian, Kabardino-Cherkess, Karachay-Balkar (cyr), Khvarshi, Kumyk, Lak, Nogai, Rutul, Tabasaran, Tsakhur, Buryat, Komi-Permyak, Komi-Zyrian, Siberian Tatar, Tofalar, Touva, Bashkir, Chechen (cyr), Chuvash, Erzya, Kryashen Tatar, Mordvin-moksha, Tatar Volgaic, Udmurt, Uighur, Rusyn, Montenegrin (cyr), Romani (cyr), Dungan, Karakalpak (cyr), Shughni, Mongolian, Adyghe, Kalmyk.

“For those who regret what keyboards and touch screens have done to their penmanship, typographer Harald Geisler has an answer: Sigmund Freud.” — The Wall Street Journal Sigmund Freud was a neurologist who lived from 1856 to 1939. His research and studies led to the foundation of ‘Psychoanalysis’. When I first saw Freud’s century old letters, I was fascinated by the beauty of these historic manuscripts. It made me smile to imagine a person writing his or her shrink a letter set in Freud’s handwriting. I started to plan creating a font based on his manuscripts. I contacted the Sigmund Freud Museum Vienna and Freud Museum London. To start the creation I selected eight handwritten documents from the archive in Vienna – This selection of specimen was my orientation during the design process. The Samples were created between 1883 to 1938 and are of various character such as handwritten scientific papers, personal letters, notes and a telegram. A successful Kickstarter Campaign "The Sigmund Freud Typeface - A Letter to your Shrink" with over 1400 Backers enabled me to visit the archive in Vienna and study the original manuscripts of Sigmund Freud. After a year of preparation and design work, I finished four alphabets based on Freud’s handwriting. What are the different Versions PRO, Kurrent, #1, #2, #3 and #4 about? “This project gives people the convenience afforded by the computer while maintaining the romantic nostalgia, beauty, and character of letter writing with real handwriting.” — Daniel Vahab, The Huffington Post When you write with your hand, every letter looks a little different. When you write a text on your computer every letter looks exactly the same. In order to make type look like handwriting, I chose four different variations of each letter from Freud’s manuscripts, drew and stored them in the font. The font is then programmed to exchange letters while you are typing. This makes the rendered result on your screen or print look like unique handwriting. PRO While you are typing… the PRO Version actively combines all four alphabets and exchanges them automatically. Through this mechanism never the same two o’s will stand next to each other. With every touch a unique look is generated. This works in certain applications i.e. Word 2010(or newer), Pages, TextEdit, Editor(Pre-installed on Windows 7 or newer), InDesign, Illustrator… →Here you can see an animation of what this effect looks like in action. (Please Note: some applications like LibreOffice, OpenOffice do currently not support this feature. Date: December 2013) #1 #2 #3 and #4 The Sigmund Freud Typeface #1, #2, #3 and #4 each hold one individual lowercase alphabet based on Freud’s handwriting. Kurrent Most of Freud’s correspondence was written in German. Until the 1950′s a different handwriting was taught throughout German speaking countries (Switzerland, Austria, Germany). This style is called Kurrent. The name Kurrent and Cursive derive from the Latin word currere - to run, hurry - both styles were designed to write fast. As you can see in the samples above, Freud practiced both Kurrent and when writing english Cursive (Latin script or Joined-up). Kurrent has three significantly different letters (s,h,e). Use Kurrent to render the authentic look of an historic Sigmund Freud letter in German. Bundle On the Top of this page you can get all six fonts of the Sigmund Freud Typeface Family in a bundle. International Typeface All styles of the Sigmund Freud Typeface feature a wide range of accented letters so you can write to all your friends in Sweden (Bjørn) France (Chloé & Zoë), Ireland (Dáirine), Poland (Łucja), Germany (Jörg) and almost everywhere around the globe (Find a complete list in the tech specs). Usage recommendations I hope that this design will be valuable to you and most of all that you have fun with this typeface! 1. Point Size — To reproduce the size of Sigmund Freud’s handwriting adjust the type size between 18-24 point in your word processor. If you are using an imaging software like Photoshop set the resolution to 300dpi and adjust the point size between 18-24. 2. Line Spacing — Narrow the line hight until swashes of capital letters touch the baseline above. This also happens when you write a letter and gives the document a unique handwritten look. 3. Right Aligned — Freud had the habit to write towards the right edge of the page and start loosely on the left. Set your text alignment to ‘right’ to incorporate this dramatic expression also to your documents. What do other People say about the Sigmund Freud Typeface? “Wouldn’t you love to write a letter to your shrink using the Sigmund Freud typeface?” — Dorothy Tan, Design TAXI ''“JUST DON’T WRITE A LETTER TO YOUR MOTHER WITH IT… …until the reader looks a bit closer, and they see 70+ years of modern science weighing in on turn-of-the-century pop psychology."'' — Mark Willson, Fast Company “Doctor, what does it mean if you dream of creating a font of Freud’s handwriting?” — Ayun Halliday, Open Culture “…geekily romantic, at once artistic and scientific” — Edie Jarolim, Freud’s Butcher “…sympathisch” — Jürgen Siebert, Fontblog !WOW! Thank you for reading the complete font description! You are awesome! If you still have a question please contact me through MyFonts or my website haraldgeisler.com. Credits This project was made possible by the help of 1481 Backers on Kickstarter and the kind support of the Sigmund Freud Museum Vienna and the Freud Museum London. Thank you. All of Freud’s Manuscripts shown are © Sigmund Freud Museum Vienna. Poster Image: IN17 - Sigmund Freud, Germany 1932. © Freud Museum London. Flag Image: IN19 - Sigmund Freud 1930’s. © Freud Museum London.

The famous roman type cut in Venice by Nicolas Jenson, and used in 1470 for his printing of the tract, De Evangelica Praeparatione, Eusebius, has usually been declared the seminal and definitive representative of a class of types known as Venetian Old Style. The Jenson type is thought to have been the primary model for types that immediately followed. Subsequent 15th-century Venetian Old Style types, cut by other punchcutters in Venice and elsewhere in Italy, are also worthy of study, but have been largely neglected by 20th-century type designers. There were many versions of Venetian Old Style types produced in the final quarter of the quattrocento. The exact number is unknown, but numerous printed examples survive, though the actual types, matrices, and punches are long gone. All these types are not, however, conspicuously Jensonian in character. Each shows a liberal amount of individuality, inconsistency, and eccentricity. My fascination with these historical types began in the 1970s and eventually led to the production of my first text typeface, Iowan Old Style (Bitstream, 1991). Sometime in the early 1990s, I started doodling letters for another Venetian typeface. The letters were pieced together from sections of circles and squares. The n, a standard lowercase control character in a text typeface, came first. Its most unusual feature was its head serif, a bisected quadrant of a circle. My aim was to see if its sharp beak would work with blunt, rectangular, foot serifs. Next, I wanted to see if I could construct a set of capital letters by following a similar design system. Rectangular serifs, or what we today call "slab serifs," were common in early roman printing types, particularly text types cut in Italy before 1500. Slab serifs are evident on both lowercase and uppercase characters in roman types of the Incunabula period, but they are seen mainly at the feet of the lowercase letters. The head serifs on lowercase letters of early roman types were usually angled. They were not arched, like mine. Oddly, there seems to be no actual historical precedent for my approach. Another characteristic of my arched serif is that the side opposite the arch is flat, not concave. Arched, concave serifs were used extensively in early italic types, a genre which first appeared more than a quarter century after roman types. Their forms followed humanistic cursive writing, common in Italy since before movable type was used there. Initially, italic characters were all lowercase, set with upright capitals (a practice I much admire and would like to see revived). Sloped italic capitals were not introduced until the middle of the sixteenth century, and they have very little to do with the evolution of humanist scripts. In contrast to the cursive writing on which italic types were based, formal book hands used by humanist scholars to transcribe classical texts served as a source of inspiration for the lowercase letters of the first roman types cut in Italy. While book hands were not as informal as cursive scripts, they still had features which could be said to be more calligraphic than geometric in detail. Over time, though, the copied vestiges of calligraphy virtually disappeared from roman fonts, and type became more rational. This profound change in the way type developed was also due in part to popular interest in the classical inscriptions of Roman antiquity. Imperial Roman letters, or majuscules, became models for the capital letters in nearly all early roman printing types. So it was, that the first letters in my typeface arose from pondering how shapes of lowercase letters and capital letters relate to one another in terms of classical ideals and geometric proportions, two pinnacles in a range of artistic notions which emerged during the Italian Renaissance. Indeed, such ideas are interesting to explore, but in the field of type design they often lead to dead ends. It is generally acknowledged, for instance, that pure geometry, as a strict approach to type design, has limitations. No roman alphabet, based solely on the circle and square, has ever been ideal for continuous reading. This much, I knew from the start. In the course of developing my typeface for text, innumerable compromises were made. Even though the finished letterforms retain a measure of geometric structure, they were modified again and again to improve their performance en masse. Each modification caused further deviation from my original scheme, and gave every font a slightly different direction. In the lower case letters especially, I made countless variations, and diverged significantly from my original plan. For example, not all the arcs remained radial, and they were designed to vary from font to font. Such variety added to the individuality of each style. The counters of many letters are described by intersecting arcs or angled facets, and the bowls are not round. In the capitals, angular bracketing was used practically everywhere stems and serifs meet, accentuating the terseness of the characters. As a result of all my tinkering, the entire family took on a kind of rich, familiar, coarseness - akin to roman types of the late 1400s. In his book, Printing Types D. B. Updike wrote: "Almost all Italian roman fonts in the last half of the fifteenth century had an air of "security" and generous ease extremely agreeable to the eye. Indeed, there is nothing better than fine Italian roman type in the whole history of typography." It does seem a shame that only in the 20th century have revivals of these beautiful types found acceptance in the English language. For four centuries (circa 1500 - circa 1900) Venetian Old Style faces were definitely not in favor in any living language. Recently, though, reinterpretations of early Italian printing types have been returning with a vengeance. The name Vendetta, which as an Italian sound I like, struck me as being a word that could be taken to signifiy a comeback of types designed in the Venetian style. In closing, I should add that a large measure of Vendetta's overall character comes from a synthesis of ideas, old and new. Hallmarks of roman type design from the Incunabula period are blended with contemporary concerns for the optimal display of letterforms on computer screens. Vendetta is thus not a historical revival. It is instead an indirect but personal digital homage to the roman types of punchcutters whose work was influenced by the example Jenson set in 1470. John Downer.