Initially, I participated in the contest to design the logo for Bill Lloyd. In the end, the design was rejected, but letters remained. I then decided to continue with the idea and complete the entire typeface. After a couple of months, I realized that the typeface was imperfect, and now that I’m working on an updated Lloyd type, this one is free. The main characteristic of the typeface is its bold and curvy shapes. It is also tall and original in design. It was a great experience because it taught me how failure inspires people to move on, and create something better.

Louisiana originated from the lovely handwriting style of Melanie Snedeker. Lettering Artist Charles Borges de Oliveira then refined the letter forms to produce this one of a kind handwriting script. When you need a legible handwriting font, Louisiana is the perfect choice. Louisiana Grab Bag is a fun little add-on to Louisiana. Chockfull of arrows, smiley faces and other little goodies.

Dialog is my first sans serif. I had made some attempts earlier, but they didn't satisfy me. Dialog was, on the contrary, so inspiring that I made 19 different fonts of it, the most complete typeface for several years. I usually prefer typefaces with serifs, but I don't miss them in Dialog. The name needs no explanation. Dialog was released in 1993.

Due to some grease on a menu, I misread "Spicy Avocado" as "Spacy Avocado" which led me to the name of this font. I love Avocados and I love things that are a bit spacy, and I love the combination of these two! Space Avocado is my handdrawn, layered headline font. Mix the layers or use them as a single font - you choose!

Quaderno Slanted is a light and monolinear script, accompanied by the heavier weights. This connected script combining elements of the traditional Italian script Bella Scrittura. Quaderno is suited for middle length texts and headlines and evokes both vernacular and commercial lettering of the 20th century and a typeface for school book purposes. You can also overlap them and get a double stroke effect.

IngyStarTilings allows one to create a variety of patterns that have stars. Some of them are quite common and others less so. A sample file is available that shows possible patterns that can be constructed with this typeface, including some non-star repeating patterns. As the posters indicate, some of the patterns constructed with the regular version are intended to be multicolored.

Ring-bearers across Middle Earth will be kissing their Sorceror's Stones, when they hear the news of the debut of this magickal collection of fonts, suitable for Incantations, Faerie talk, Books of Magic and fantastickal Arias. Coincidentally the official font of Scott Sava's DREAMLAND CHRONICLES (how didja guess?), Dreamland is also suitable for any chronicles you may have of your own.

Ring-bearers across Middle Earth will be kissing their Sorceror's Stones, when they hear the news of the debut of this magickal collection of fonts, suitable for Incantations, Faerie talk, Books of Magic and fantastickal Arias. Coincidentally the official font of Scott Sava's DREAMLAND CHRONICLES (how didja guess?), Dreamland is also suitable for any chronicles you may have of your own.

ITC Dinitials is the work of German designer Helga Joergensen. When I started drawing the first of them, I was very much inspired by dinosaurs, but during the work my fantasy guided me more and more and then became rather fabulous creatures." ITC Dinitials is a capital letter alphabet available in both black on white and white on black weights."

The Griffith Initials font was inspired by a set of highly stylized capital letters from the remarkable hand of one of Americas foremost penmen, dating back to 1927. They combine a large degree of accuracy, grace, strength, and freedom. This font includes one set of graceful A-Z initials conveniently assigned to both the upper and lower case alphabet characters.

A little Compacta, a little Impact, a little photolettering from the 70s, all rolled into one make for a unique headline face that commands attention. Although this font is primarily unicase, the lowercase positions feature stylistic alternates, so can can mix things up and pack them in. Both versions of the font include 1252 Latin, 1250 CE (with localization for Romanian and Moldovan).

Originally I planned to call this font “pegefinger” which is index finger in danish. Due to the obvious reason that I drew the letters using my “pegefinger” :) Most letters mimic a loose (perhaps even childish) handwriting, but the legibility is never out of hand. I’ve added 5 different versions of each lowercase letter, and they automatically changes as you type!

People are always asking us for chiseled-stone style fonts, so we thought we'd give them what they want, but with a slightly different spin. Stonecross has the look of classic Celtic uncial lettering as it would look if it was cut in stone, with some fanciful variant character forms and the nicks and chips which give it the look of stone.

Nothing is hidden in the simplistic forms and overt aesthetic of Anya Danilova’s Rezak font family. Rezak is not a type family directly from the digital world, but was inspired by the stout presence of cutting letters out of tangible material: paper, stone, and wood. With only a few cuts, the shapes remain dark and simple. With more cuts, the shapes become lighter and more defined, resulting in a dynamic type family not stuck within one specific category. The Black and medium weights began as one approach before separating into display and text categories. The four text weights were created through pendulum swings in design direction that experimented with contrast, angles, tangent redirections, and the amount of anomalies allowed. The text weights are vocal when set larger than ten points and subtle at smaller sizes. The tech-heavy Incised display style came last, employing a surprising range of trigonometric functions to make it behave exactly as desired. Its look can result in something distinctive and emotional or completely over-the-top. Most normal typefaces change only in thickness; Rezak changes in intention, highlighting the relationship between dark and light, presence and absence, what’s removed and what remains. Rezak’s Black and Incised display styles are like a shaft of light in reverse and are perfect in situations of impact: websites, headlines and large text, gaming, call-outs, posters, and packaging. The tone works for something from youthful or craft-oriented to organic and natural products. Try these two in logotypes, complex print layering, branding, and words-as-pattern for greater experimentation. The text styles are bold, energetic, well informed, and round out the family with four weights (Regular, Semibold, Bold, Extrabold) and matching italics for a family grand total of ten. These jaunty styles work well in children’s books, call-outs, movie titles, and subheads for myriad subjects such as architecture, coffee, nature, cooking, and other rough-and-tumble purposes. Rezak’s crunchy letters are meant to expose rough, daring, or dramatic text. A further benefit is that this family is not sequestered within one specific genre or script, so it can be easily interpreted for other scripts, such as its current Latin and extended Cyrillic which supports such neglected languages as Abkhaz, Itelmen, and Koryak. Rezak’s push toward creativity and innovation, with an eye on typography’s rich history, reinforces our foundry’s mission to publish invigorating forms at the highest function and widest applicability.

Combine, designed by Carlos Fabian Camargo G, is powerful and attractive, multi-layered chromatic type family that consists of 12 fonts, typographically grouped in two logics: “Script and Caps”, so that they could be colored separately or in group. Both designed with contrasting optical techniques and combinable at the same time. The unforgettable central idea of Combine was inspired by unique types of speedball letters designed by ancient artists in Canadian posters of shows and fairs in 1930. This is why its Typographical tools work independently or in group, resulting in highly polished designs that need fonts with coupled effusiveness. Their combined resources offer guaranteed distinguishing letters with shadow effects and worn, in order to help enhance their expressiveness. Combine is excellent in any project on paper or screen as it has more than 2100 glyphs and features of OpenType distributed strategically in fonts easy to use. SEE BELOW THE MAIN ADVANTAGES: • Combine Script & Shadow: It offers incredible case sensitive fluency and eloquence drawn with vertical cursive letters with ornamental non-stop excitement and complementation. It also has a variety of significant upward and downward, alternative strokes combined with its vintage ties that also give authenticity to their designs. • Combine Caps 1,2,3 & Shadow1,2: Guarantees you a colorful horizontal area of narrow case with 2 types of shadows, sound and other shade with diagonal stripes. Its geometric uniformity gives a friendly, open and subtle character by Typographic and special resources and visual properties coloring layers separately or in groups. In addition, its 2 layers of skeletal illuminations, adding internal lines and simultaneously contributing to play perfect confrontation and contrast with their geometric ideas and aesthetics for special attention. • Combine Words & Shadow: It can be used to design a perfect tone in each one of the 50 slogans written diagonally, making a brilliant feeling suggestive seductive style. Compatibility and flexibility works by monoline thin cursive strokes ideal for featured items with and without shade. Combine was selected at the Bienal Tipos Latinos 2016

Époque Seria is that kind of person who looks really cute when angry. This font was derived from the Époque family. She is the little sister to Époque - a little shorter with her smaller x-height and — how do you say it in the typographic circle — your eyes are also smaller (and you know you squint when things get serious, isn't it?). The genealogy of these font face is undeniable, but Époque Seria has a ‘personality’ very different from her older sister. The reduction of the x-height also shakes somewhat with the cap that had crossbar. To accompany the package of standardization, the letters that don't have their straight axes were changed, which brought to the set more Cs and Gs contemporaries. In addition, other measures were taken as a greater softness in the variation of the weights and the abandonment of the black weight, being considered too heavy for this version.

Behrens Initialen is based on the type graphics of the German architect and type designer Peter Behrens (1868-1940). The drawing of the original typeface is in tune with the Art Nouveau (Jugendstil) style in which Behrens worked. This is a light, delicate, somewhat theatrical typeface, the forms of which bear at the same time a certain shade of Gothic and modernity, and can be used, in particular, when there is a need to make a reference to medieval graphics while maintaining the modern style of composition. In the proposed version, the original initial graphics are used not only for uppercase letters, but also for Arabic figures, while for lowercase letters and for the base of other characters are used the letters themselves - without decorative framing. This feature can be useful for obtaining various effects when using both lower and upper cases in parallel, including when they are overlaid. The font includes the Latin, Cyrillic and Armenian ranges. Created by Ruben Tarumian in 2020.

vakaDi is stylish futuristic tech font designed for such areas as hi-tech, future, sport, space, army, games and many others. In the process of creating the font, we faced the choice of which letters are better - this or that... Each of them was beautiful in its own way and so we decided to include them all!:) Some you will find in upper case, others in lower case. Multilingual support (Latin extended). It is designed for header and text both.

Meet the new slick calligraphy font - Earline. This gorgeous script is for those who need some elegance and style for their designs and is perfect for wedding invitations, save date cards, feminine branding, and other necessities. This font is modern, simple, but still authentic. Earline includes the complete set of Basic Uppercase and Lowercase Characters, Numbers, and Punctuation Marks. It also contains binders and many stylistic alternatives to perfectly recreate natural calligraphy (check the preview to see all of them).

Please meet Venettica Signature, a romantic script typeface. As you can see, this typeface has elegant look with natural feel. The swashes make the font looks even more unique. You can play around and mix and match the swashes, combining into a great signature! They works perfect for you who needs a typeface for headline, logotype, apparel, invitation, branding, packaging, advertising etc. This typeface is comes in uppercase, lowercase, punctuation, symbols, numerals, stylistic set alternate, ligatures, etc also support multilingual.

Meet the new slick calligraphy font - Chelya. This gorgeous script is for those who need some elegance and style for their designs and is perfect for wedding invitations, save date cards, feminine branding, and other necessities. This font is modern, simple, but still authentic. Chelya includes the complete set of Basic Uppercase and Lowercase Characters, Numbers, and Punctuation Marks. It also contains binders and many stylistic alternatives to perfectly recreate natural calligraphy (check the preview to see all of them).

Meet the new slick calligraphy font - Lovetina. This gorgeous script is for those who need some elegance and style for their designs and is perfect for wedding invitations, saving date cards, feminine branding, and other necessities. This font is modern with a love style, but still authentic. Lovetina includes the complete set of Basic Uppercase and Lowercase Characters, Numbers, and Punctuation. It also contains binders and many stylistic alternatives to perfectly recreate natural calligraphy (check the preview to see all of them).

The sheet music for the 1939 tune "Chico's Love Song (Ma-La-Ja Fa-La Pas-Ka Lah-Ta) [Cuban Double Talk]" may have had an odd title, but the main portion of it was hand lettered in an interesting style. Condensed letters with rounded corners complemented by sharp lines and angles give the characters an almost futuristic look, despite the fact that they were designed during the Art Deco era. This became the basis for Song Composer JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Jules Verne. Wild, Wild West. Tomorrowland. The Past’s extrapolation of the Future. So it was wrong, it’s still romantic. Steampipe is a font constructed of bits and pieces, reminiscent of the ironwork construction of the Crystal Palace or the inner workings of The Time Machine. Although it works fine as is, it comes alive with some Photoshop Layer Styles. Steampipe has the most extensive kerning of any font I've designed, just so (most) letters fit together as if they were constructed as a unit; use them in a program that supports special kerning.

These letters were developed to decorate the font Bowling and then were also used in the fonts Coffeemug and Teapot. For many years the InsideLetters family had only one family member, InsideLetters. An upgrade in early 2019 added two more family members, InsideLettersHalloween and InsideLettersXmas. The first puts the letters from InsideLetters on pumpkins and the second puts them on Christmas tree ornaments. In 2022 and oblique stye was added to the family. Inside letters is caps-only. It is a casual and playful handwritten sans-serif font.

The BrightIdeas family contains two novelty fonts that have letters on light bulbs. The fonts have some characters on standing bulbs and some on hanging bulbs and these two sets are made to alternate with the OpenType contextual alternatives (calt) feature. To use only one set of bulbs, this feature must be turned off and character spacing adjusted. The family contains a style with clear bulbs and one with filled bulbs. They can be used in layers to add color. Both are monospaced. The characters on the bulbs are derived from the font Myhota-Bold.

Boot Camp JNL has the same roots as Jeff Levine's Condensed Stencil JNL, as they were both modeled from a set of vintage brass interlocking stencils made by the Stafford Manufacturing Company. The previous font was drawn from limited examples of the stencils seen in an online photograph, so a number of the basic characters had to be improvised. Since then, a nearly complete set was obtained and the alphabet and numerals are truer to the original design. Additionally, both Regular and Oblique versions of Boot Camp JNL are available.

Aurelac - is a font that was inspired by the cover of the book "Learn to sew" by authors Egorova R. I. and Monastyrnaya V. P. This is a contrasting font that has unusual serifs and combines elegance and brutalism. Many uppercase letters are bold, while lowercase letters are lighter, which gives a more unusual effect to the text and the beginning of the sentence. It is perfect for headlines, posters, logos, banners, covers and much more. If you find errors in the font, kerning, then a huge request to write to the address: bunineugene@gmail.com

The six typefaces of the Kyhota group all have an “Old West” look to them. KyhotaOne has very thick slab serifs compared to KyhotaTwo. KyhotaBarbed is more condensed than either and has little barbs on the verticals, something that was a feature of a number of nineteenth century typefaces in this style. KyhotaFezdaz is condensed, without barbs, and with the slab serifs replaced with a flare serif. KyhotaBigBottom and KyhotaBigTop play with the weighting of the serifs, with one (either top or bottom) very thin and the other very thick.

Hunter Rising - Brush Font a relaxed and flowing handwritten script font. Incredibly versatile, this font fits a wide pool of designs, elevating them to the highest levels. Add this font to your favorite creative ideas and notice how it makes them come alive! Feature A-Z Character Set Numerals & Punctuations (OpenType Standard) Stylistic Alternates Swash Multilingual Ligatures

Okasa, our newest typeface, is now available. We present to you a quirky and contemporary typeface, which you can use to produce an optimal visual display in each of your projects and to impress all of your audience with the unique look of your project. Because everyone does not necessarily understand Japanese letters, we supply fonts with letters that can be utilized for your project. We produced this display font with a Japanese theme or an Asian font, which we designed to fulfill the needs of your Japanese-themed project. Of sure, your initiative will be understood by people all around the world. Logotypes, food banners, branding, brochure, posters, movie titles, book titles, quotes, and more may all benefit from this font. Of course, using this font in your various design projects will make them excellent and outstanding; many viewers are drawn to the striking and unusual graphic display. Start utilizing this typeface in your projects to make them stand out. Caps only fonts

I always admired the beauty of Gothic letters, but lamented their low readability. The revivals of Gothic faces are beautiful, but they revive everything, including the traits that prevent readability. Blackletters are fine in ads and titles, but can’t be used in long texts (like books on Middle Ages, Medieval romances etc) where they would be the perfect historical choice. And I wanted to change this scenario. With Giureska, instead of taking one particular face to revive, I chose the best traits from many Gothic faces, i.e. the forms that were pleasant to look and easy to read. For the ‘small caps’, I studied uncial scripts and made a similar selection, adapting everything to make a unified font. With three weights, true italics and the uncials, Giureska can endure a variety of projects, bringing the appeal of Middle Ages much beyond the cover.

The letters in the Linotype Aspect Family fonts seem to be experiments in the handcrafting of letters with just a few basic geometric forms. For instance, the bowls of the letters C, D, and G in Linotype Aspect Intro are all made up of narrow half circles. Features like this make Linotype Aspect Intro perfectly suited for headlines and short passages of text. Its quirkiness is sure to lend a smile to the faces of your readers. For shorter headlines with larger point sizes, try setting your text in Linotype Aspect Regular, the second member of the Linotype Aspect family. Linotype Aspect Regular uses the same basic letterforms as Linotype Aspect Intro, but reverses them out in white, and places them over bulbous black shapes. The Linotype Aspect family was developed by German designs Hans-Jürgen Ellenberger in 1999.

Monospaced become very popular among graphic designers. Nevertheless, I’ve noticed that in most cases that designers use monospaced typefaces is not because of their particular features caused by the strict rules of design — all characters share the same advanced width — rather because of it’s ‘electronic derived’ appearance. So, I decided to create a typeface that keeps the characteristics that, in my opinion attract designers to this particular sort of types, but deliberately break the main rule: characters do not share the same width — but they they look like they do! Characters are better balanced compared to truly monospaced types, giving more even typographic color while used in text setting. One weight might enough to please electronic type lovers. Designed in 2000.

Yumo is a new, textured remix of the original 2010 Yume typeface, and has plenty to offer of its own. Angular and blocky, this typeface creates impactful text with a hint of playfulness, expanded upon by its rough finish. There are no extraneous edges to this font because most of them have been subsumed into the characters themselves, so any sharpness it may have from the squared corners is removed by the lack of thin strokes or serifs. Perfect for headlines and large text that wants to stand out, Yumo’s big, bold text will help your message make an impact. Playing with colours on the textured surface only helps to strengthen this effect, so that Yumo will blow people away, whatever you want to say.

This style mimics the flare or upward fade that comes with the use of a spray paint can, as the tops of the letters flare, and become wider. An original font style, named after the border town of Mexicali, this font style falls under the larger umbrella of what is called Cholo-graffiti style. Originally from New Jersey, MENE has made his home in, New York City. He had a brief albeit satisfying career of street bombing in the late 90s that saw its end with a brief encounter with the Vandal Squad. Now a family man, Mene has dedicated himself to the preservation and education of style in its many forms.

The design of the Newspoint typeface is based on the tradition of the American sans serif faces of the last century. This form expression was greatly influenced by the News Gothic type which was created by Morris Fuller Benton in 1908, and has, once again, become very popular. When the development of sans serif types such as Futura and Kabel by Renner and Koch began in 1925, the design of American sans serif types receded somewhat into the background. In the 1950’s, however, they experienced a renaissance which continues to this day. Thanks to its clean design and the relatively large x-height, the Newspoint is well suited for informative texts in newspapers, magazines, and brochures. In packaging design, as well, the Newspoint can display its strength in small print. Newspoint was developed as a customer-specific variation of the News Gothic. In contrast to the News Gothic, however, the face appears to be softer and more appealing thanks to the changed interpunctions. If so desired, the alternative characters give the typeface expanded individuality and a richness of design options.

In March 2011, the Society of Typographic Aficionados began organizing a collaborative project that would unite the typographic and design communities. The goal of Font Aid V: Made for Japan was to raise funds to expedite relief efforts after the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Nearly 300 contributors from 45 countries sent in over 500 glyphs in a single week. Behind the scenes, volunteers Neil Summerour, Silas Dilworth, Delve Withrington, and Grant Hutchinson were up to their elbows in Adobe Illustrator and Fontlab assembling the typeface. The sheer number of submissions coupled with the complexity of some of the designs caused unforeseen delays in completing the typeface. The team not only managed the immense influx of submissions, it also had several technical hurdles and multiple content reviews to mitigate before the final font could be produced. Several months after the project was initiated, Font Aid V: Made for Japan was finally ready for distribution. With the help of Sogo Japan, all proceeds from sales of this typeface will be delivered directly to organizations in Japan, such as Second Hand and AMDA International (Association of Medical Doctors of Asia). Sogo Japan strives to help circumvent regular international charity channels and the inefficiencies associated with them. Thanks to everyone who participated and helped us spread the word about the Font Aid V: Made for Japan project. In particular, we would like to acknowledge the following individuals and groups for their participation and involvement: Jonathan Abbott, Rui Abreu, Frank Adebiaye, Tim Ahrens, Anonymous, Eero Antturi, Leonardo Aranda, Hector Carrillo Aspano, Danielle Atnip, Alejandro Cabrera Avila, Christophe Badani, Joanne Gyo Young Bae, Ben Balvanz, Cynthia Bataille, Priyanka Batra, Donald Beekman, Hannes Beer, David Berlow, Kevin Beronilla, Fabian Bertschinger, Nicole Bittner, Bart Blubaugh, Dathan Boardman, Andrew Boardman, Joel Vilas Boas, Konstantin Boldovskiy, Scott Boms, Michael Browers, Vickie Burns, Matt Burvill, Daniele Capo, Seymour Caprice, Mauro Caramella, Matevž Čas, Eli Castellanos, Sarah Castillo, Tom Censani, Pinar Ceyhan, Ivette Chacon, Hin-Ching Chan, Sarah Charalambides, Karen Charatan, Sinde Cheung, Todd Childers, Justin Chodzko, Felipe Coca, Antonio Coelho, Jefferson Cortinove, Alan Lima Coutinho, Nick Cox, Nick Curtis, Girish Dalvi, Christopher DeCaro, Thomas C Dempsey, Matt Desmond, Chank Diesel, Anum Durvesh, Suzie Eland, Engy Elboreini, Craig Eliason, Emi Eliason, James Elliott, Grace Engels, Exljbris, Hillary Fayle, Carol Fillip, Jeff Fisher, Scott Fisk, John Foley, Stuart Ford, Mathias Forslund, Brock French, Anina Frischknecht, Eric Frisino, Chiyo Fujimori, Kaela Gallo, Ayesha Garrett, Harald Geisler, Alfonso Gómez-Arzola, Adriana Esteve González, Richard Gregory, James Grieshaber, Grupoingenio, Kemie Guaida, Carlos Fabián Camargo Guerrero, Rachel Han, Erin Harris, Stefan Hattenbach, Magnus Hearn, Marissa Heiken, Georg Herold-Wildfellner, Jamie Homer, Ed Hoskin, Dav[id Hubner], Jonathan Hughes, Rian Hughes, Grant Hutchinson, Xerxes Irani, Masayuki Izumi, Jan Janeček, Hyun Kyung Jang, Julien Janiszewski, Dušan Jelesijevic, Cal Jepps, Meghan Jossick, Evamaria Judkins, July Twenty Fourth, Erica Jung, William K, Claes Källarsson, Kapitza, Asutosh Kar, Arno Kathollnig, Sami Kaunisvirta, Hajime Kawakami, Scott Kaye, Richard Kegler, Anna Keroullé, Bizhan Khodabandeh, Lara Assouad Khoury, Ilona Kincses, Becky King, Sean King, Megan Kirby, Max Kisman, Keith Kitz, Romy Klessen, Akira Kobayashi, Kokin, Kozyndan & Silas Dilworth, Atushi Kunimune, Andreas Kuschner, John Langdon, Ray Larabie, Jess Latham, Kelly D Lawrence, Matic Leban, Chien-Hao Lee, Bryan Levay, Enrico Limcaco, Andreas Lindholm, Andrew Loschiavo, Chris Lozos, Ian Lynam, John Lyttle, Gustavo Machado, Jonathan Mak, Ricardo Marcin, Jeannie Mecorney, Steve Mehallo, Cristina Melo, Martin Mendelsberg, The Midnight Umbrella Studio, Goro Mihok, Ojasvi Mohanty, Ahmed Mohtadi, Alixe Monteil, Veronica Monterosso, Dani Montesinos, Masanobu Moriyama, Misa Moriyama, Pedro Moura, John Moy Jr, Marc Marius Mueller, Shoko Mugikura, Joachim Müller-Lancé, Diane Myers, John Nahmias, Yoshihisa Nakai, Hiroshi Nakayama, Reiko Nara, Nathoo, Titus Nemeth, Nathanael Ng, Ngoc Ngo, Antoninus Niemiec, James Ockelford, Kunihiko Okano, Naotatsu Okuda, Toshi Omagari, Onikeiji, Ozlem Ozkal, Jason Pagura, Hrant Papazian, Brian Jongseong Park, John Passafiume, Patrick Griffin, Alejandro Paul, Vian Peanu, Dylan Pech, Rebecca Penmore, Peter Brugger, Jean François Porchez, Carolyn Porter, Andrew Pothecary, James Puckett, Rachel Hernández Pumarejo, James Random, Liam Roberts, Tom Rogers, David Jonathan Ross, Sumio Sakai, Sana, Stuart Sandler, Rafael Saraiva, Riccardo Sartori, Ai Sasaki, Yee Wen Sat, Agnes Schlenke, Giovanna Scolaro, Roland Scriver, Alessandro Segalini, Shawn Semmes, Jane Sheppard, Josh Sherwood, Paulo Silva, Mark Simonson, Luis Siquot, Greg Smith, Owen Song, James L. Stirling, Nina Stössinger, Tanya Turipamwe Stroh, Kevin Strzelczyk, Neil Summerour, Superfried, Shiho Takahashi, Shuji Takahashi, Yusuke Takeda, Naoyuki Takeshita, Bruno Tenan, Chung-Deh Tien, Tom, Ryoichi Tsunekawa, Alex Tye, Matthew Tyndall, TypoVar, Virginia Valdez, Beatriz Valerio, Tom Varisco, Brayden Varr, Catarina Vaz, Andy Veale, Yvette Claudia Velez, Marie-Anne Verougstraete, Abbie Vickress, Ray Villarreal, Pat Vining, Courtney Waite, Hoyle Wang, Viola Wang, Jim Ward, Grace Watling, Terrance Weinzierl, Robert Weiss, Stuart Weston, Kevin Wijaya, Dave Williams, Beau Williamson, Delve Withrington, Katherine Wood, Neil Woodyatt, Jesvin Yeo, Yokokaku, Kazuhi Yoshikawa, YouWorkForThem, Matt Yow, Charlton Yu, Yuriko, Ron Za, Jayson Zaleski, Víctor Zúñiga

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.