PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Price Didone has inspired a full alphabetic font - Mastadoni, so if you're after more than numerals, head over there! Price Didone is a font with a singular purpose: The setting of elegant, stylish price tags. As such it is non-alphabetic, featuring instead numerals, a large array of currency symbols, and a smattering of typographic niceties such as quotes, brackets, pilcrow, daggers and a very curvaceous ampersand. Certain currency symbols that are not independent glyphs (Q, Ft, kr etc.) are included as their constituent letters, some of which also have automatic ligatures for that little something extra. There are currency symbols included which have not (yet) been accepted to unicode, such as the Russian Ruble and Bitcoin symbols. For ease of access, these can be typed using the standard ligatures feature. See features below for the full list. Features: Automatic Fractions - with fractions feature engaged, arbitrary fractions are a doddle. Stylistic Sets: SS01 - an alternate look for 4 SS02 - a double stroked dollar symbol SS03- the # sign becomes a stylish numero Stylistic Alternates - for software that doesn't support stylistic sets, the above three features are grouped into the one SALT feature. Standard Ligatures - certain typed combinations automatically change to different glyphs: B|| = Bitcoin symbol P- = Russian Ruble RM = Malaysian Rimgit symbol Rp = Indonesian Rupiah Rs = Rupees Ft = Hungarian Forint kr = Kroner symbol % off;%off;%ff = Special percent off ligature Discretionary Ligatures - this feature sets decimal prices like $5.95 with the numerals after the period smaller and raised from the baseline, underlined by a nice swoosh. It also shrinks the dollar, sterling, and Euro symbols for a more authentic look. While intended for one sole purpose, Price Didone could nevertheless be quite versatile. Quote marks and typographic symbols can be used for decoration. Everybody loves a nice ampersand and this is one I'm really proud of. Or you might just want some pretty numbers for your house, or sports jersey, or just to stand out a little from the rest of your text. Whatever use you may have in mind, go for it. And do let me know if your currency symbol isn't included, and I'll quickly add it to the glyph set in future versions.

Matthew Carter has been refining his design for Alisal for so long, he says, that when he was asked to complete the design for the Monotype Library, it was almost as if he were doing a historical revival of his own typeface. The illusion even extended to changes in his work process: although he now does all his preliminary and final drawing on screen, the first trial renderings of Alisal were done as pencil renderings. Alisal is best classified as an Italian old style design. Originally created between the late 15th and mid-16th centuries in northern Italy, the true Italian old styles were some of the first roman types. They tend to be the most calligraphic of serifed faces, with the axis of their curved strokes inclined to the left, as if drawn with a flat-tipped pen or brush. These designs offer sturdy, free-flowing and heavily bracketed serifs, short descenders, and a modest contrast in stroke weight. Alisal has nearly all the classic Italian old style character traits, plus a few quirks of its own. It is calligraphic in nature, with more of a pen-drawn quality than faces like Palatino or Goudy Old Style. It is more rough-hewn than either Goudy's Kennerley or Benton's Cloister, and is generally heavier in weight than most of the other Italian old style designs. One place where Alisal makes a clean break with traditional old style designs is in the serifs. While sturdy and clearly reflecting pen-drawn strokes, Alisal's serifs have no bracketing and appear to be straight strokes crossing the main vertical. Like Caslon or Trajanus, Alisal is a handsome design when viewed as a block of copy. Ascenders are tall and elegant, and serve as a counterpoint to the robust strength of the rest of the design. Alisal is available as a small family of roman and bold with a complementary italic for the basic roman weight, providing all that is needed for the majority of text typography. Alisal is not as well-known as some of Carter's other typefaces, but this lovely and long-incubated design was certainly worth the wait.

Pekin is an unusual design with an oriental flavor. It was originally designed by Ernst Lauschke and released by The Great Western Type Foundry of Chicago as “Dormer,” which is similar to the French verb ‘to sleep,’ not exactly a marketing triumph. Barnhart Bros. And Spindler (independently-operated subsidiary of ATF since 1911) bought Great Western in 1918. According to McGrew, AMERICAN METAL TYPEFACES of the TWENTIETH CENTURY, BB&S renamed the typeface prior printing their 1925 specimen book — guess they wanted something just a tad more exciting. Quirky, distinctive and fun. Pekin 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 415 glyphs (compared to 218 glyphs in the original release). 2. 652 Kerning Pairs. Note: Ag, Aj and gj will cross unless kerned. Alternative A may also be used. 3. Added OpenType GSUB layout features: onum, salt, liga, dlig, hist, ornm and kern. 4. Revised vertical metrics for improved cross-platform line spacing. 5. Refined various glyph outlines, based on improved scans. 6. Added set of Tabular Numbers at cap height, based on original design; added Old-Style Numbers based on default design. 7. Added a bunch of alternative characters: 18 upper case letters, 10 lower case letters, 1 ampersand and 1 bullet. The alternate c is actually the original design, but I don't like it - easily confused with e. Alt E H M h m n r t are from the original design. I added the rest. 8. 7 Ligatures, 4 Ornaments, 18 Geometric Shapes, 6 Arrows and 12 Misc. Symbols. The zip package includes two versions of the font at no extra charge. There is an OTF version which is in Open PS (Post Script Type 1) format and a TTF version which is in Open TT (True Type)format. Use whichever works best for your applications.

C.P. Company is a group of types including 4 different forms and it is a complementary sign of communication for the C.P. Company clothes maker. C.P. Company communication makes use of media such as the press and the web and that’s the reason why we have always felt the need for a font that would not show incongruities through the monitor. Therefore we have decided to change the structure of glyphs like a, e, g, s… in the most contrasted versions to prevent the serifs from touching the internal parts of the letters and in this manner we have made a really unusual stylistic choice for a group of types. The difference between the height of caps and smalls is very low (about 20%) so that the smalls are easy to read even when their dimensions are on a very small scale. Moreover this stylistic solution gives the possibility to avoid using the small capitals in case of charts and catalogue codes (i.e. Tricot M5) and provides more vertical compactness between the lines. Even a sentence written in capital letters next to another one written in smalls does not look so much contrasted from a typographical point of view and then it is not unpleasant. The limits due to different constructive principles have been overcome by means of a grid based on the automatic division of EM square of 9-point type and in this manner the letters have a wider face. The font is even more unusual owing to the style chosen that belongs to the classical tradition of hair-lined types for glyphs like e and also thanks to ligatures like ? in the characters set. CP Company is a geometrical font whose alphabet makes use of the style of types that preceded the Helvetica, matched with more experimental and updated solutions. Numbering is monospaced. The bending of number 2, the slight raising of the oblique serif of number 4 and the presence of a hair-line in number 7 are the solutions adopted to make the types match in a more balanced manner.

Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, which can be translated in English as “Dreaming Love Fighting of Poliphilus”, is a romance about a mysterious arcane allegory in which the main protagonist, Poliphilo, pursues his love, Polia, through a dreamlike landscape. In the end, he is reconciled with her by the “Fountain of Venus”. The author of the book is anonymous, however, an acrostic formed by the first, elaborately decorated letter in each chapter in the original Italian reads “POLIAM FRATER FRANCISCVS COLVMNA PERAMAVIT”, which means “Brother Francesco Colonna has dearly loved Polia”. Despite this clue, the book has also been attributed to many other authors. The identity of the illustrator is less certain than that of the author. It was first published in Venice, in December 1499, by Aldo Manutio. This first edition presents an elegant and unique page layout, with refined woodcut illustrations in an Early Renaissance style and a refined Roman font, cut by Francesco da Bologna, which is a revised version of the type used in 1496 for the De Aetna of Pietro Bembo. The print quality is very high for the time, but nevertheless it presents many inconsistencies and imperfections due to the non-ideal inking and adherence of the matrix to the paper. For that reason numerous samples of the original have been used to create every single glyph which will result in an appropriate reconstruction and not a mere and humble reproduction. Some letters like \J, \U and \W were extrapolated, because they are not part of the original alphabet of the period. Some letters like \Q, \X, \Y, \Z and \h have been updated to more modern variants, but the original shape is accessible by Stylistic Alternates Opentype Feature, which also changes the shape of the \V and the \v. The original numerals \zero, \one, \tree, \four and \six have been accompanied by reconstructions of the missing numbers and extended by modern figures. Finally, swashed lower cases and original scribal abbreviations were also included. The font has joined by a matching Italic variant, closely inspired from Aldo Manuzio's 1501 "Vergilius", the first book printed entirely in Italic type by Francesco da Bologna.

Guided tour available here. Port Vintage is a new typeface expanded upon the original Port typeface, released in 2013, and being an experimental Didone typeface with a modern twist, inspired by the well known forms of typography masters such as Bodoni and Didot and the exuberance and elegance of calligraphy typefaces. A lot of changes were made, the whole typeface is now softer and has less rough edges, the time it took to mature made it possible to achieve an entirelly new and distinct flavour from the original Port, giving away the rough edges from Port and giving place to the soft transitions and curved connections between the stems and serifs of Port Vintage. Port Vintage melts the straight lines and strong contrasts of the Didone typefaces with the elegant lines of calligraphy in a geometric way, resulting in exuberant characters with geometric swashes that can be combined in countless ways. The result of this experiment is Port Vintage, an unique and rich display typeface meant to be used on big sizes and it’s main perk is the amount of alternative characters it features. Port Vintage is Open-Type programmed and includes hundreds of alternates, from swashes to titling alternates, ligatures and stylistic sets with each character having a thin version of itself, giving complete freedom to all your creative needs. Port Vintage is available in 10 different styles: Port Vintage Regular, being the base version and featuring the whole base character set; Port Vintage Regular Decorated, featuring richer forms and containing more ornamentated and more extravagant characters; Port Vintage Medium and Port Vintage Medium Decorated, designed for the occasions you need a bit more thickness and the decoration variants: Port Vintage Ornaments, containing a wide set of elements meant for the creation of fillets, vignettes and fleurons, resulting in an almost infinite number of possible combinations to embellish your designs and Port Vintage Words, a set of some of the most common words used in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Portuguese. All styles, except Port Vintage Ornaments and Port Vintage Words, include italic styles. For a better understanding of all the uses of Port Vintage and the full character list the reading of the manual is recommended.

As I perused the latest offerings in the realm of graphic design, I chanced upon a curious creation that caught my discerning eye. Nerdropol, an offspring of the Neuropol X typeface, is a simulated bitmap typeface that touts a bevy of striking effects. This digital wonder is designed to capture the essence of original pixel fonts, rendering each character with precision and attention to detail. As I delved deeper into Nerdropol’s aesthetic, I couldn’t help but marvel at its distinctly industrial feel. Indeed, this font exudes a hard-edged, high-tech vibe that is sure to turn heads and captivate the senses. Every letter, meticulously crafted to evoke a sense of raw, unadulterated power, is sure to make an impact in any project. Nerdropol takes things to a whole new level by limiting kerning to full pixel increments, further emphasizing its digital origins. This meticulous attention to detail serves to heighten the overall effect of the font, resulting in a truly unique and visually stunning experience. In conclusion, if you seek to infuse your graphic design projects with a touch of cyberpunk flair, look no further than Nerdropol. With its daring aesthetic and unrivaled attention to detail, this font is sure to take your creations to new heights of digital excellence. 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.

The market for humanistic sans serif type families is saturated, so what can a new release add, and what does it take to stand out from the crowd? Asterisk Sans Pro (named after my favourite glyph to make) aims to be a highly versatile type family; massively useful due to its pan-European language support and bounty of OpenType features which make it the ideal choice for demanding typography. The look is contemporary; details which give the fonts character at large sizes all but disappear when small, making the middle weights suitable for large chunks of text. The family ranges from a hairline ultra light to a pretty weighty black – a must in a new typeface. Asterisk Sans Pro supports Latin, modern Greek and Cyrillic, with localized forms for Bulgarian, Serbian and Macedonian to boot. This is rare enough, but to have small caps for all these scripts in both upright and italic fonts is a big plus. Your client may not need all this language support right now, but this typeface gives them the option to grow while keeping a consistent look, and at a similar price point to families with a much narrower scope. The ability to customize Asterisk Sans Pro through the use of Stylistic Sets in OpenType savvy layout programs means you are really in control. Want more italic forms in the uprights? Go for it. A more Roman italic? Easy! The spurless m, n, r and u, accessible through SS13 give a graphic, almost bauhaus feel. The Dutch IJ glyph can be changed to a much cooler thing using SS14, and the family even supports ij-acute. Other OpenType features include a wealth of numeral styles (tabular and proportional, lining and oldstyle, plus small cap figures, numerators, denominators, subscript and superscript) and automatic fractions. There are also case-sensitive forms for all caps settings, a bunch of useful arrows, and superscript lower case Latin letters. All in, there are well over 1200 glyphs per font, making Asterisk Sans Pro an invaluable tool in your typeface arsenal, great for everything from corporate identities to editorial work, apps to cookbooks.

Noad Sans is an experimental sans serif typeface with a strong character and some very unique visual features. At the core of Noad Sans is a sturdy sans serif with closed apertures and fairly simple letterforms. The defining feature of Noad Sans, however, is its visualised nodes: all control points of Bézier curves in each of the fonts in the family are intentionally visualised. The effect of this feature is largely defined by the usage: in titles and larger bodies of text, the visualised nodes stand out and create a rhythmic pattern of their own. In smaller sizes, the sans serif base of the font becomes more prominent and the nodes create a visual fuzz. Noad Sans comes in 6 styles and as a Variable Font with two axes–Optical Size and Slant. The size of each node can be changed from the smallest (Mini and Mini Italic) to the largest (Extra and Extra Italic). Variable Font technology allows you to fine tune the size of the nodes and the slant angle, so that your version of Noad Sans can be truly unique. Noad Sans has a large character set of 570+ glyphs, covering the vast majority of Latin based languages. In addition to that there are dozens of special characters, punctuation, numbers, and symbols. Noad Sans is equipped with a number of useful OpenType features, such as Case-Sensitive Punctuation, Stylistic Alternates, Ligatures, Fractions and many more. Noad Sans began as an experimental project, and during its development the spirit of experimentation was at the heart of the project. Thanks to the unique nature of the typeface, it can feel at home in a variety of settings: from web development, graphic and product design to more novel uses like 3D and NFTs. Noad Sans type family includes 6 static fonts (Mini, Mini Italic, Regular, Regular Italic, Extra and Extra Italic) and one variable font. Each style can be purchased separately. There is a free trial version of Noad Sans that can be downloaded free of charge on MyFonts. For more information on the typeface, feel free to download Noad Sans PDF Specimen.

Laima is the brush-formed stencil from Bogidar Mascareñas that will create an ovation for branding, album art, upscale venues, and packaging. If wide appeal, attention to detail, or international reach is necessary for your brand, consider Laima’s high-calibre design as your personal ambassador. The general font user is accustomed to stencil typefaces that have a brute look to them — industrial, mechanical, restrictive, or even militarised. Stencils are commonly used because they serve a function, like spray-painting over template letters, giving the reader a warning that must be heeded for safety, or a command to follow immediately. Wooden crates and grunge art are the medium and black or red paint are the norm. Laima, instead, creates a stencil from the world of calligraphy to turn all this on its head. Laima’s 12 stencil styles (six roman and six italic) use the junctures of calligraphic strokes as an opportunity to achieve an uncommon stencil effect, shifting to create unexpected shapes and the illusion of twisted, disconnected overlaps. Inspired by “Arte Nueva de Escribir”, an engravings book published by Francisco Palomares in 1776, Laima progressed well beyond its beginning as a Type and Media Master’s project at KABK, The Hague (NL). It sometimes required completely new character shapes to accommodate the space needed for clear diacritic marks, and was further enhanced with flourishes and alternates for liveliness and variety in individual or branded work. Laima’s italic begins with swashes and uses OpenType features to automatically turn them off with more than two successive capital letters. Use one swashed character for a drop cap, two for ligatured fun, turn them on or off at your discretion, or change the ascender length and swash shape to suit your creative need. With two styles of numerals and stylistic sets for final forms, Laima’s 12 styles and hundreds of Latin-based languages can turn simple words into an occasion that would immediately benefit high-class brands and special uses. Set that article title, release that new product, code your best-looking UI yet, letterpress that business card, and print that gourmet label. Whatever is next, Laima is the unexpected stencil partner to introduce it to an expectant world.

Protipo helps information designers work smarter. Veronika Burian and José Scaglione’s Protipo type family is an information designer’s toolbox: a low-contrast sans of three text widths with a separate headline family, accompanied by an impressive two-weight icon set, and working with the advanced variable (VAR) font format. From annual reports and wayfinding to front page infographics and poster use, designers consistently turn to the simplicity and starkness of grotesque sans fonts to get their point across. Protipo is made for such environments. When designing information you may start with the headline, which in the case of this family is called Protipo Compact and comes in eight weights. From Hairline to Black, set it large, overlap it, or let it run off the page. Protipo Compact was made to hit hard and attract attention with a different character set and different proportions than the three text fonts. It sets the stage for what’s to come. Great information designers are aces at melding form and function, so we’ve stacked the Protipo family with Narrow, Regular, and Wide versions as a way of organising your information and directing the reader. Each width has seven distinct weights (light to bold) and italics, while maintaining the round-rect shapes of its DNA. Subtle details amplify its place in the typographic universe, like an ‘a’ and ‘e’ that go from solid to supple when italicising, an ‘f’ that gains an italic descender, two versions of the lowercase ‘r’ and ‘l’, and clipped corners on diagonals to keep the tight fit inherent to this kind of design work. Protipo is not meant to be loudmouthed, but stakes its claim through refinement, breadth, and impact. Some changes at first don’t seem substantial, but the Protipo family doesn’t handle text like most in its category. Protipo helps readers find and process data in a clear and unequivocal way and accounts for the complexity involved in rendering large amounts of information while still appealing to aesthetics. Protipo is ideal in all informative situations: apps, infographics, UI, wayfinding, transport, posters, display, and even internet memes. Add to all this the icon sets and upcoming variable font capability, and you’re assured a level of creativity, productivity, and impact on a much greater scale.

A friend of mine says that sports are the ultimate popular drug. One of his favorite things to say is, “The sun’s always shining on a game somewhere.” It’s hard to argue with that. But that perspective is now the privilege of a society where technology is so high and mighty that it all but shapes such perspectives. These days I can, if I so choose, subscribe to nothing but sports on over a hundred TV channels and a thousand browser bookmarks. But it wasn't always like that. When I was growing up, long before the super-commercialization of the sport, I and other kids spent more than every spare minute of our time memorizing the names and positions of players, collecting team shirts and paraphernalia, making up game scenarios, and just being our generation’s entirely devoted fans. Argentina is one of the nations most obsessed with sports, especially "fútbol" (or soccer to North Americans). The running American joke was that we're all born with a football. When the national team is playing a game, stores actually close their doors, and Buenos Aires looks like a ghost town. Even on the local level, River Plate, my favorite team where I grew up, didn't normally have to worry about empty seats in its home stadium, even though attendance is charged at a high premium. There are things our senses absorb when we are children, yet we don't notice them until much later on in life. A sport’s collage of aesthetics is one of those things. When I was a kid I loved the teams and players that I loved, but I never really stopped to think what solidified them in my memory and made them instantly recognizable to me. Now, thirty-some years later, and after having had the fortune to experience many cultures other than my own, I can safely deduce that a sport’s aesthetic depends on the local or national culture as much as it depends on the sport itself. And the way all that gets molded in a single team’s identity becomes so intricate it is difficult to see where each part comes from to shape the whole. Although “futbol” is still in my blood as an Argentinean, I'm old enough to afford a little cynicism about how extremely corporate most popular sports are. Of course, nothing can now take away the joy I got from football in my childhood and early teens. But over the past few years I've been trying to perceive the sport itself in a global context, even alongside other popular sports in different areas of the world. Being a type designer, I naturally focus in my comparisons on the alphabets used in designing different sports experiences. And from that I've come to a few conclusions about my own taste in sports aesthetic, some of which surprised me. I think I like the baseball and basketball aesthetic better than football, hockey, volleyball, tennis, golf, cricket, rugby, and other sports. This of course is a biased opinion. I'm a lettering guy, and hand lettering is seen much more in baseball and basketball. But there’s a bit more to it than that. Even though all sports can be reduced to a bare-bones series of purposes and goals to reach, the rules and arrangements of baseball and basketball, in spite of their obvious tempo differences, are more suited for overall artistic motion than other sports. So when an application of swashed handlettering is used as part of a team’s identity in baseball or basketball, it becomes a natural fit. The swashes can almost be visual representation of a basketball curving in the air on its way to the hoop, or a baseball on its way out of the park. This expression is invariably backed by and connected to bold, sleak lettering, representing the driving force and precision (arms, bat) behind the artistic motion. It’s a simple and natural connective analysis to a designer, but the normal naked eye still marvels inexplicably at the beauty of such logos and wordmarks. That analytical simplicity was the divining rod behind Fan Script. My own ambitious brief was to build a readable yet very artistic sports script that can be a perfect fit for baseball or basketball identities, but which can also be implemented for other sports. The result turned out to be quite beautiful to my eyes, and I hope you find it satisfactory in your own work. Sports scripts like this one are rooted in showcard lettering models from the late 19th and early 20th century, like Detroit’s lettering teacher C. Strong’s — the same models that continue to influence book designers and sign painters for more than a century now. So as you can see, American turn-of-the-century calligraphy and its long-term influences still remain a subject of fascination to me. This fascination has been the engine of most of my work, and it shows clearly in Fan Script. Fan Script is a lively heavy brush face suitable for sports identities. It includes a variety of swashes of different shapes, both connective and non-connective, and contains a whole range of letter alternates. Users of this font will find a lot of casual freedom in playing with different combinations - a freedom backed by a solid technological undercurrent, where OpenType features provide immediate and logical solutions to problems common to this kind of script. One final thing bears mentioning: After the font design and production were completed, it was surprisingly delightful for me to notice, in the testing stage, that my background as a packaging designer seems to have left a mark on the way the font works overall. The modern improvements I applied to the letter forms have managed to induce a somewhat retro packaging appearance to the totality of the typeface. So I expect Fan Script will be just as useful in packaging as it would be in sports identity, logotype and merchandizing. Ale Paul