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.

Juan Bruce’s Noort is not a type family for wayfinding or mapmaking alone, but for clarifying information and engaging readers along their own journey. The information designer’s role is to bring clarity and style to overwhelming amounts of information, which fortunately is Noort’s purpose as well. Hierarchies submit to its will and layering colour only adds more presence to its active posture. Noort’s design uses the proven editorial text features of a large x-height, ample spacing, and low contrast to check all the boxes for paragraph text use. But it’s the long serifs, wide characters, and overall typographic presence that make it resilient and ease the task of reading in small point sizes. These details mean Noort is able to demonstrate importance not only with its five pitch-perfect weights, but with its brindled colour within a layout. Noort’s roman and italic styles play off each other by transplanting their design features. The roman style’s serifs are transferred in substance but expectedly increased in speed in the italic styles. And the italic’s inktraps and separated strokes are echoed amidst the roman’s upright structure. Where digitisation could have removed the influence of the hand, Noort retains the analogue nature of its creation. This antiphonal seeding of details creates a cohesive family that is as fascinating as it is functional. Noort’s axis and serifs have a slightly varying ductus — the directional flow that aids reading and character clarity. Its latent obviousness in text sizes immediately becomes its signature style when bumped up to subhead sizes. And since Noort’s counters are so wide and welcoming, its heavier weights can expand more within themselves than along their exterior edges. Noort’s ten total fonts cover the Latin A Extended glyph set to bring its unbordered, globetrotting sensibilities to your projects. OpenType features include ligatures, fractions, and several figure styles, along with mature-rather-than-overbearing swashes. Aligned with TypeTogether’s commitment to produce high-quality type for the global market, the complete Noort family can set digital and printed works with ease, capitalising on the dual needs of clear information and fascinating textual artistry.

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.

“Hey, look at me!” cried the new advertising typefaces. With the nineteenth century and the industrial revolution came an esthetic revolution in type design. Brash, loud, fat display faces elbowed their way into the crowd of book faces, demanding attention. Those who admired traditional book types harumphed and complained. Robert Thorne had fired the opening round with his Fatface. With the cutting of Figgins Antique, the battle was well and truly joined. Job printing came into its own and it seemed like everything changed. The world of printing had been turned upside down and the gentile book-type aficionados recoiled in horror much as the rural landed gentry recoiled at the upstart middle class shopkeepers and manufacturers. William Savage, approvingly quoted by Daniel Berkeley Updike over a hundred years later, described the new display faces as “a barbarous extreme.” These were exciting times. According to Geoffrey Dowding in his An Introduction To The History Of Printing Types, “The types which we know by the name of Egyptian were first shown by Vincent Figgins in his specimen book of 1815, under the name Antique.” Of course, dating the design is not quite as simple as that. Nicolete Gray points out that Figgins used the same “1815” title page on his specimen books from 1815 to 1821, adding pages as needed without regard to archival issues. As a result, there are different versions of the 1815 specimen book. In those copies that include the new Antique, that specific specimen is printed on paper with an 1817 watermark. The design is dated by the 1817 watermark rather than the 1815 title page. Figgins Antique ML is an all-cap font. This typeface is for bold statements. Don't waste it on wimpy whispers of hesitant whimsies. And please don't use it for extended text -- it will only give someone a headache. Think boldly. Use it boldly. Set it tight. Go ahead and run the serifs together. Solid and stolid, this face is very, very English. FIGGINS ANTIQIE ML represents a major extension of the original release, with the following changes: 1. Added glyphs for the 1250 Central Europe, the 1252 Turkish and the 1257 Baltic Code Pages. Added glyphs to complete standard 1252 Western Europe Code Page. Special glyphs relocated and assigned Unicode codepoints, some in Private Use area. Total of 331 glyphs. 2. Added OpenType GSUB layout features: liga and pnum. 3. Added 86 kerning pairs. 4. Revised vertical metrics for improved cross-platform line spacing. 5. Redesigned mathamatical operators. 6. Included of both tabular (standard) & proportional numbers (optional). 7. Refined various glyph outlines.

New Lincoln Gothic is an elegant sanserif, generous in width and x-height. There are twelve weights ranging from Hairline to UltraBold and an italic for each weight. At the stroke ends are gentle flares, and some of the round characters possess an interesting and distinctive asymmetry. The character set supports Central Europe, and there are three figure sets, extended fractions, superior and inferior numbers, and a few alternates, all accessible via OpenType features. Back in 1965, Thomas Lincoln had an idea for a new sanserif typeface, a homage of sorts, to ancient Roman artisans. The Trajan Column in Rome, erected in 113 AD, has an inscription that is considered to be the basis for western European lettering. Lincoln admired these beautiful letterforms and so, being inspired, he set out to design a new sanserif typeface based on the proportions and subtleties of the letters found in the Trajan Inscription. Lincoln accomplished what he set out to do by creating Lincoln Gothic. The typeface consisted only of capital letters. Lincoln intentionally omitted a lowercase to keep true his reference to the Trajan Inscription, which contains only magiscule specimens. The design won him the first Visual Graphics Corporation (VGC) National Typeface Competition in 1965. The legendary Herb Lubalin even used it to design a promotional poster! All this was back in the day when typositor film strips and photo type were all the rage in setting headlines. Fast forward now to the next millennium. Thomas Lincoln has had a long, illustrious career as a graphic designer. Still, he has one project that feels incomplete; Lincoln Gothic does not have a lowercase. It is the need to finish the design that drives Lincoln to resurrect his prize winning design and create its digital incarnation. Thus, New Lincoln Gothic was born. Lacking the original drawings, Lincoln had to locate some old typositor strips in order to get started. He had them scanned and imported the data into Freehand where he refined the shapes and sketched out a lowercase. He then imported that data into Fontographer, where he worked the glyphs again and refined the spacing, and started generating additional weights and italics. His enthusiasm went unchecked and he created 14 weights! It was about that time that Lincoln contacted Bitstream about publishing the family. Lincoln worked with Bitstream to narrow down the family (only to twelve weights), interpolate the various weights using three masters, and extend the character set to support CE and some alternate figure sets. Bitstream handled the hinting and all production details and built the final CFF OpenType fonts using FontLab Studio 5.

Breviary - Display Typeface "UNIQUE serif modern font" likely refers to a typeface that combines elements of traditional serif design with contemporary and distinctive features. Serif fonts have small lines or strokes attached to the ends of characters, which can contribute to a more formal or traditional appearance. The term "modern" in this context typically implies a contemporary or updated style. Here's an explanation of the characteristics and significance of a UNIQUE serif modern font: -Serif Elements: Serifs are the small lines or strokes at the ends of characters, and they are a hallmark of traditional typography. In a UNIQUE serif modern font, these serif elements are likely to be present but may have a distinctive shape or style that sets them apart from more conventional serif fonts. -Contemporary Design: The "modern" aspect of the font suggests a contemporary or updated design. This may involve a departure from the more classical serif styles seen in traditional typefaces, incorporating modern design principles, cleaner lines, and a more minimalist aesthetic. -Distinctive Characters: A UNIQUE serif modern font is likely to feature characters with unique and individual design elements. This could include unconventional serifs, letter shapes, or other stylistic details that make the font stand out and contribute to its uniqueness. -Versatility: While serif fonts are often associated with formality and readability, a UNIQUE serif modern font may offer versatility suitable for a range of design applications. It could be used in both traditional and modern contexts, providing flexibility for various design projects. -Applicability to Branding: Fonts play a crucial role in branding, and a UNIQUE serif modern font could be an excellent choice for businesses or projects that want to convey a sense of tradition and reliability while maintaining a contemporary and innovative image. -Digital and Print Design: Modern serif fonts are often designed with both digital and print applications in mind. The clarity of the typeface, even at smaller sizes, and its aesthetic appeal make it suitable for a variety of design projects, from websites and apps to print materials like brochures and posters. -Attention to Detail: The uniqueness of the font may be reflected in the careful attention to detail in each character. This could include refined curves, balanced proportions, and other design elements that contribute to the overall visual appeal and readability of the font. -Available Features: Unique serif modern fonts may come with additional features, such as alternative characters, ligatures, or stylistic sets, allowing designers to customize the appearance of the text for specific design needs.