Robert Moore is a font that was specially designed for comics. A lot of work has been done. At first, glyphs were drawn manually using different markers, then they were transferred to the font. The font was tested on real printing and digital comics. The world of fonts for comics is big and I wanted to create even more variability for authors with one family, which is why a variable version was created containing two axes: weight and italics. This gives you more options. A large number of glyphs, multilingualism, ligatures, and a capital give even more scope for work and creativity. The name was created from the names of the authors of the comics Robert Kirkman and Alana Moore, so the Robert Moore font turned out. Although the font was made for comics, it is not limited to them. Posters, logos, covers, text, headings, prints, product design, web, interfaces are not all options for using the font.

As as a computer programmer, it is my job to stare at screens of text all day. As soon as I learned the mechanics of font design, I boldly set out to design a typeface from my own handwriting that I could use to make my life easier. First, it had to have very distinctive numerals (trust me, it can be easy to mistake an 8 for a 3 in code), it had to have huge punctuation characters (even Perl code like '[lN*1lK[d2%Sa2/d0' looks good in Debug), and it had to be a bit friendlier than Courier (so that I don't give up hope when my code won't compile). I had so much fun designing it that I decided to give it strange lower-case 'i's and 'm's as a bonus. I also spent far too much time hinting it so that it would look as nice as possible at low resolutions.

FranklinGothicHandLight is part of a series of hand-drawn fonts from way back in time – before computers changed the way we worked. When I was in advertising – before computers – a very time consuming part of my daily work was sketching headlines. I used to be able to sketch headlines in Franklin Gothic, Times, Futura, Helvetica and several scripts. We had a kind of huge inverted camera – which we called Lucy. We projected the alphabet onto a sheet of transparent paper, outlined the letters with a fineliner and then filled them in. It was very tedious work, but the resulting headline had its own charm and we had a permanent race going on who was best and fastest. I won most of the time! They used to call me the fastest "Magic Marker" this side of the Atlantic. Great days, just like today! Your sentimental type designer from the past Gert Wiescher

FranklinGothicHandDemi is part of a series of hand-drawn fonts from way back in time – before computers changed the way we worked. When I was in advertising – before computers – a very time consuming part of my daily work was sketching headlines. I used to be able to sketch headlines in Franklin Gothic, Times, Futura, Helvetica and several scripts. We had a kind of huge inverted camera – which we called Lucy. We projected the alphabet onto a sheet of transparent paper, outlined the letters with a fineliner and then filled them in. It was very tedious work, but the resulting headline had its own charm and we had a permanent race going on who was best and fastest. I won most of the time! They used to call me the fastest "Magic Marker" this side of the Atlantic. Great days, just like today! Your sentimental type designer from the past Gert Wiescher

He’s been mixing one part artist and one part barbarian since 2005. Brutal, ruthless, cutthroat, he moves through the concrete jungle, unsheathing his, um, sword, taking what he wants without care or remorse. He follows no rules. He is the URBAN BARBARIAN. The Spoils of Battle Await Him! Is he Conan? Roger ‘Mad Men’ Sterling? No, he’s Dan Panosian. Artist. Author. Lover of fine women, drinker of fine scotch, drawer of fine pictures. This is his fine font. Well, one of them. See the families related to Urban Barbarian: Dan Panosian Features: Two fonts: all-uppercase GIANT and upper/lowercase DWARF.

Rameau for classic elegance The type family Rameau™ was designed by Sarah Lazarevic She started with the italics; these she derived from the manuscript of the opera Les fêtes de l´hymen et de l´amour", the music for which was composed by Jean-Philippe Rameau in 1747. In the 18th century, musical compositions were published in the form of impressions from copper plates that had been hand-engraved in contrast with books and other texts, which were printed from moveable lead type. The italic letters of Rameau include many ligatures and are thus typical of the engraving style of the period. Rameau exhibits much of the harmonious rhythm associated with genuine manuscript. The marked Antiqua contrasts make the pages on which the font is used quite literally sparkle. This effect is enhanced by the excessively sharp terminals and the prominent serifs of the upper case letters. This highly legible and stylish type family can be used for printing high quality books, invitations, menus and all kinds of texts - anywhere the grace and elegance of France in the 18th century is to be invoked."

Admiral was inspired by and extrapolated from the Art Nouveau lettering incised into the facade of a local hostelry. This gave us some inspiration for the capitals 'A', 'B', 'C', 'E', 'H', 'I', 'L', 'O', 'S', 'T' and 'U'; we then had great fun extrapolating the rest! The source of the name Admiral can be spotted if you look at characters such as 'A', 'H' and 'N'. Admiral's distinctive charm and humour lends it to projects with a 1900s Art Nouveau theme, be they book covers, posters, signage, invitations, cards, or anything else you enjoy!

This vintage, iconic typeface of original Czech letter-founding has been faithfully revised, extended and newly rendered in 2012. The majority of Vojtěch Preissig’s type faces have been, from their very creation, subject to controversial evaluations which might perhaps fill more pages than have been set in these type faces so far. The considerable technological backwardness of Czech typography between the world wars intensified the author’s creative effort even more. He had been devoting thought to his Antikva type face from 1912 onwards and dozens of hardly perceptible nuances of the same design have been preserved in his drawings. It was his only book type face, but it shows no signs of any hard struggle in creating it. Its extraordinary vividness and elegance are really surprising. It may be still indebted to the forms of Art Nouveau, which was withering away at that time, but its proportions, colour and expression inspire other Czech type designers. Preissig’s Antikva, Menhart’s Figural (and also Růžička’s Fairfield) and Týfa’s Antikva represent a clear line of development, very far away from the soft aesthetics of Tusar, Dyrynk or Brunner. The co-author of the modification for computer composition is Otakar Karlas. Without his experience the work would remain only a shadow of Preissig’s design. Our aim was to produce a large family of type faces for the setting of both books and jobbing works. The digital transcription of Preissig’s Antikva came into existence from summer till winter 1998. The direct model for this type face is the most successful, two-cicero (24 pt.) design dating from 1925. The designs of other sizes (12 pt., 14 pt., 16 pt. and then 36 pt. and 49 pt.) lack vividness and are the source of the widespread mistaken belief that Preissig’s Antikva consists of straight lines. That is, unfortunately, how even Muzika and Menhart describe it. Neither is it a Cubist type face as many of the semi-educated think today. Special attention had to be paid to italics. It is apparent that their design is not as perfect as that of Preissig’s Antikva. In contradistinction to the original we have deleted almost all lower serifs in the lower-case letters, enlarged the angle of inclination and completely redesigned the letters a, e, g, s, k, x, ... All crotches have been lightened by marked incisions. In other words, none of the italic letters corresponds to Preissig’s model. The signs which were missing have been supplemented with regard to the overall character of the alphabet. Preissig did not deal with bold designs, but the crystal-clear logic of his “chopping-off” of the round strokes enabled us to complete the type face family without any greater doubts. An excessively fragile type face, however, cannot be used for setting in smaller sizes; that is why we have prepared a separate family of text designs which has shortened ascenders, normal accents, slightly thickened strokes, and is, in general, optically more quiet and robust. We recommend it for sizes under 12 points. By contrast, the elegance of the basic design will be appreciated most in the sizes used for headlines and posters. Preissig’s Antikva is suitable not only for art books and festive prints, but also for poetry and shorter texts.

Futurum Parqez is the first collaborative font for Parquillian Design. The idea for this font first came to the creator, Jose V Lopez, almost 40 years ago. A couple years ago he shared his concepts and we were gradually able to collaborate on editing the designs and turn them into a working font. The philosophy behind the font is to use a standardized frame format and the fewest strokes possible, while maintaining legibility, to create an original minimalist and modern style.

Homelessfonts is an initiative by the Arrels foundation to support, raise awareness and bring some dignity to the life of homeless people in Barcelona Spain. Each of the fonts was carefully digitized from the handwriting of different homeless people who agreed to participate in this initiative. A biography/story of each homeless person captures their story, to help raise awareness and bring some dignity to the life of homeless people. Monotype is pleased to donate all revenue from the sales of Homelessfonts to the Arrels foundation in support of their mission to provide the homeless people in Barcelona with a path to independence with accommodations, food, social and health care. Salvador was born in a small village in the province of Seville, Spain where he lived until 2002. During many years he worked in restaurants, construction, and in the fields, until he decided to go try his luck in Palma de Mallorca. There he worked in hotels and in construction, until the economic crisis erupted and he was left without work or benefits of any kind and he began to live in the street: “The street has few good things, but it teaches you to be more selfless, to share with others what you have, even if it isn’t much.” In 2006, a friend encouraged him to come along to Barcelona and bought his plane ticket. Once there, things did not go much better and he had to continue living in the street. A year ago he left behind that life and now he explains his experience in guided tours to school groups: “I like it because I see that many of them are interested and they ask questions. It is good that they learn.”

“Nusaibah” is the first name of an early convert woman to Islam, and the first female to fight in defense of the Islamic religion. Her full name is Nusaibah bint Kaíab Al-Maziniyyah and she took part in the Battles of Uhud, Hunain, Yamama and the Treaty of Hudaibiyah with Islam’s prophet Muhammad (pbuh). Nusaibah is best known for her brave and heroic feat during the Battle of Uhud - fought on March 19, 625 - when she entered the battle carrying a sword and a shield to protect the prophet Muhammad (pbuh) from the arrows of the enemy, and she accordingly received several wounds while fighting and these wounds were not healed until the following year. The prophet Muhammad (pbuh) mentioned her distinct courage by saying that in whichever direction he turned in the battlefield, he could see her defending and protecting him. "Nusaibah" is a modern, geometric, and headline Arabic display typeface. The main trait of this typeface is the novel symmetrical design of its letters which renders it as one of the modern stylish typefaces used for headlines and titles. This is can be noticed in its letters such as “Theh”, “Jeem”, “Ain”, “Sheen”, and others. Moreover, “Nusaibah” font has a character set which supports Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Latin letters and numerals with a limited range of specific Arabic and Latin ligatures. This font comes in two weights (i.e., regular and bold) with nearly 643 distinctive glyphs. Due to its geometric and linear design, “Nusaibah” typeface is appropriate for heading and titling in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu magazines, posters, and surfaces of different equipment. It is also elegantly suitable for signs, books’ covers, advertisement light boards, products’ and services’ names, and titles of flyers, pamphlets, novels, and books of children. “Nusaibah” typeface is one of the Arabic typefaces that has a novel and modern-day design which can be used in versatile graphic, typographic, and artistic works in different languages for diverse cultures.

At the turn of the 20th century monolinear alphabets were often despised for their dullness. Typographers, therefore, took great pains to breathe some kind of individuality into the monotonous sans-serif scheme. They started with subtle differentiation in the thickness of vertical and horizontal strokes and finished by improving details. By this they arrived at a more decorative appearance of the type face which thus became more regardful of the eye of the bourgeoisie. Ideal Gothic is no exception. It is characterized by a correct stiffness which will improve the morals of every idea printed by this type face. The awkward curves of the italics are a little suggestive of openwork iron products or the bent iron of the decorative little railings in a Prague park. The so-called "hidden" and, furthermore, curved serifs complete the inconspicuous "charm" of this type face. All its above-mentioned features, however, suddenly turn into advantages when we need to design a magazine, a brochure or an annual report, in short whenever illustrations dominate. It is not by accident that the basic design of "Ideal Gothic" has such a light tonal value - it competes neither with fine pencil sketches, nor with sentimental landscapes. It is very suitable for business cards and corporate identity graphics.

Divina Proportione is based from the original studies from Luca Pacioli. Luca Pacioli was born in 1446 or 1447 in Sansepolcro (Tuscany) where he received an abbaco education. Luca Pacioli was born in 1446 or 1447 in Sansepolcro (Tuscany) where he received an abbaco education. [This was education in the vernacular (i.e. the local tongue) rather than Latin and focused on the knowledge required of merchants.] He moved to Venice around 1464 where he continued his own education while working as a tutor to the three sons of a merchant. It was during this period that he wrote his first book -- a treatise on arithmetic for the three boys he was tutoring. Between 1472 and 1475, he became a Franciscan friar. In 1475, he started teaching in Perugia and wrote a comprehensive abbaco textbook in the vernacular for his students during 1477 and 1478. It is thought that he then started teaching university mathematics (rather than abbaco) and he did so in a number of Italian universities, including Perugia, holding the first chair in mathematics in two of them. He also continued to work as a private abbaco tutor of mathematics and was, in fact, instructed to stop teaching at this level in Sansepolcro in 1491. In 1494, his first book to be printed, Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalita, was published in Venice. In 1497, he accepted an invitation from Lodovico Sforza ("Il Moro") to work in Milan. There he met, collaborated with, lived with, and taught mathematics to Leonardo da Vinci. In 1499, Pacioli and Leonardo were forced to flee Milan when Louis XII of France seized the city and drove their patron out. Their paths appear to have finally separated around 1506. Pacioli died aged 70 in 1517, most likely in Sansepolcro where it is thought he had spent much of his final years. De divina proportione (written in Milan in 1496–98, published in Venice in 1509). Two versions of the original manuscript are extant, one in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, the other in the Bibliothèque Publique et Universitaire in Geneva. The subject was mathematical and artistic proportion, especially the mathematics of the golden ratio and its application in architecture. Leonardo da Vinci drew the illustrations of the regular solids in De divina proportione while he lived with and took mathematics lessons from Pacioli. Leonardo's drawings are probably the first illustrations of skeletonic solids, an easy distinction between front and back. The work also discusses the use of perspective by painters such as Piero della Francesca, Melozzo da Forlì, and Marco Palmezzano. As a side note, the "M" logo used by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is taken from De divina proportione. “ The Ancients, having taken into consideration the rigorous construction of the human body, elaborated all their works, as especially their holy temples, according to these proportions; for they found here the two principal figures without which no project is possible: the perfection of the circle, the principle of all regular bodies, and the equilateral square. ” —De divina proportione

Quase is a very free interpretation of the types found in the “Specimen of Printing Types” by William Caslon from 1785. We didn’t want to follow any of the models introduced in the Specimens, but rather gather a series of typographic aspects that we found useful and interesting from the several sizes and styles available and then give them consistency and new proportions so they could fit our very own purpose. We wanted to start with Caslon and then transform it into an editorial typeface, hence the increase of the x-height and the radical reduction of the ascenders and descenders. Despite the Display, Headline and Text fonts we also wanted to make a single weight Poster version with, inspired by the mechanical script introduced in the Double-Pica Script, to be used in magazines or as a complementary display typeface.

Quase is a very free interpretation of the types found in the “Specimen of Printing Types” by William Caslon from 1785. We didn’t want to follow any of the models introduced in the Specimens, but rather gather a series of typographic aspects that we found useful and interesting from the several sizes and styles available and then give them consistency and new proportions so they could fit our very own purpose. We wanted to start with Caslon and then transform it into an editorial typeface, hence the increase of the x-height and the radical reduction of the ascenders and descenders. Despite the Display, Headline and Text fonts we also wanted to make a single weight Poster version with, inspired by the mechanical script introduced in the Double-Pica Script, to be used in magazines or as a complementary display typeface.

Quase is a very free interpretation of the types found in the “Specimen of Printing Types” by William Caslon from 1785. We didn’t want to follow any of the models introduced in the Specimens, but rather gather a series of typographic aspects that we found useful and interesting from the several sizes and styles available and then give them consistency and new proportions so they could fit our very own purpose. We wanted to start with Caslon and then transform it into an editorial typeface, hence the increase of the x-height and the radical reduction of the ascenders and descenders. Despite the Display, Headline and Text fonts we also wanted to make a single weight Poster version with, inspired by the mechanical script introduced in the Double-Pica Script, to be used in magazines or as a complementary display typeface.

Quase is a very free interpretation of the types found in the “Specimen of Printing Types” by William Caslon from 1785. We didn’t want to follow any of the models introduced in the Specimens, but rather gather a series of typographic aspects that we found useful and interesting from the several sizes and styles available and then give them consistency and new proportions so they could fit our very own purpose. We wanted to start with Caslon and then transform it into an editorial typeface, hence the increase of the x-height and the radical reduction of the ascenders and descenders. Despite the Display, Headline and Text fonts we also wanted to make a single weight Poster version with, inspired by the mechanical script introduced in the Double-Pica Script, to be used in magazines or as a complementary display typeface.

Malabar is a type family for extensive text. Its design was developed with a nod toward newspapers. Malabar's characters are seriffed and of the Old Style genre. A strong diagonal axis is apparent within the curves. Sturdy serifs help strengthen the line of text in small point sizes, as well as define the overall feeling of the face. Malabar's x-height is very high, a deliberate choice that makes the most important parts of lowercase letters visibly larger in tiny settings. The height of the capital letters is also rather diminutive, allowing for better character fit, as well as eliminating a bit of clumsiness in German, which often includes quite a few uppercase letters. Diacritical marks and additional alphabetic forms required by many Western, Central, and Eastern European languages are naturally a part of the character set, including those needed in the Baltic states, for Romanian, and for Turkish. Malabar's accents are bold and direct, sitting well with their base glyphs. The family includes three weights, each with a companion Italic. Malabar Regular is equipped with small caps, and both it and Malabar Italic include oldstyle figures. All members of the family have both proportional and tabular-width lining figures, as well as special variants of certain punctuation marks vertically adjusted for all-caps text setting. Malabar is informed both by contemporary ideas of typeface design (sheared terminals, the wider-drawn s) as well as by 16th-century masters. Malabar Heavy and Heavy Italic are very loud; their blackness almost shouts out from the page. The Regular's wedge serifs become more slab-ish in nature as the letters' weight increases. Malabar Heavy and Heavy Italic are best relegated to headline use only. Malabar Bold and Bold Italic may be used for text emphasis, a job for which the Heavy is to dark. Malabar received a Certificate of Excellence in Type Design at the Type Directors Club of New York TDC2 competition in 2009.

Remember those plastic Popsicle sticks that clicked together and you could make things from them with your sticky little fingers? Things like... camp crafts. Well, no� Of course you don't. You were too young. That�s why there is Campcraft. This is a fun loving dot-matrix font, or it would be a fun loving dot-matrix if the vertical and horizontal grid lines didn't pile up at the intersections. Then again, it wouldn't be any fun if they didn't pile up at the intersections, would it? Strictly a display type... Campcraft is excellent for what the name suggests. I goes well with Christmas sweaters, beaded jackets and purses and that time when we were all happy children with sticky little fingers.

Iwan Stencil is a new revival of an old display typeface. Based on type originally designed by Jan Tschichold in 1929, the style was revived by Klaus Sutter in 2008. The letterforms in this peculiar design are very high contrast; all of the thin bits are much thinner than the thick parts. They have a modern, upright axis. All in all, the creation has a bit of a Bodoni-gone-crazy touch. The thin elements are the unique part of the design that binds this face together. They almost naturally fade away in the stencil gaps (or pylons), making you wonder if you are really looking at a stencil face at all. These thins contribute greatly to the typeface's overall serif-style, making the design at least a semi serif typeface, if not a full serif one. The lowercase n, for instance, has no serifs of its own, but many of the other letters have clear ones, or serif-like terminals. A serif stencil face is a peculiar variety, especially in this day and age, but in the past they were much more common, if not the norm, The Iwan Stencil typeface has only one weight. Naturally, this is just for display. Use Iwan Stencil to cut real stencils, or only to create the effect of stenciled type in your design work. Ivan Stencil includes all of the characters that you have come to expect in a font. Just because this design was originally made in 1929 does not mean that is has a 1929 character set. Instead, it includes a 21st century, with extended European language support Jan Tschichold, who we have to thank for today's Iwan Stencil inspiration, was a man of many faces. A trained calligrapher who went on to codify the New Typography, would go on to become a teacher, a classical book designer, and the creator of the Sabon typeface. Like all young designers, he was occasionally in need of money. Before his emigration from Germany in 1933, he took on many kinds of commissions. In the late 1920s, a time full of waves of economic turmoil within Germany and across the world, he began designing a typefaces for different European companies, mostly display things like this. For a time during the mid-1920s, Jan Tschichold went by the name Iwan" "

The other day I was at a market with my kids and they had this really retro kind of circus thing. The signs and posters there, were designed in a really sloppy and poor manner - but they all had a lot of naive charm! I was really fascinated by all these uneven letters and I was immediately inspired to do a font like that! And out of the magic hat comes...ta-da-da-da...Cirkus Fantastiko! Planning on throwing a party with a circus theme? Then Cirkus Fantastiko is ready to play the juggling clown while riding the elephant! Play around with the 3 different layers to create that low budget hand painted cirkus posters! :)

Modern antiqua (Victorian, Scotch Roman) «Dodo», 2008–2019. Named so as a portmanteau of Bodoni – Didot. XIX-th century fonts, especially Victorian antiquas, were almost excluded from the modern use by their XX-th century's descendants. And these new books had lost too much of their former beauty, elegance. Their old noble spirit. This project, «Dodo» was started in 2008 year as the first then modern revival for the Old Imperial Russian book scotch antiqua, used 120–170 years ago in almost every printed book. Still keeping the spirit of the Steam æra.

The German designer Emil Rudolf Weiss originally created Weiss Rundgotisch for the Bauer typefoundry in 1937. In their catalog for the typeface, Bauer began with this quote from Leonhard Wagner: The round gothic (rundgotisch) script is the most beautiful kind of script; she is called the mother and the queen of all the rest." While designing Weiss Rundgotisch, Weiss was inspired by Renaissance types cut by the Augsberg printer Erhard Ratdolt. Ratdolt had spent some time in Venice, which is most likely where he became familiar with round gothic letters. This sort of letterform was never as popular in Germany as Fraktur or Gotisch may have been, but round gothic types were used there for centuries to represent arts and craft feelings, as well as old-fashioned handwork. For a blackletter typeface, Weiss Rundgotisch is very similar to normal serif and sans serif designs, especially its uppercase letters, which seem to have some uncial influence in them as well. Therefore, Weiss Rundgotisch is more legible for contemporary readers, making this an excellent choice for anyone looking to set text, logos, or headlines with in blackletter. Weiss Rundgotisch was apparently quite a difficult typeface to design, even for a master designer like Weiss. He began work on the face in 1915; Weiss Rundgotisch's development took over 20 years to complete."

This bitmap font is made of 97 icons to use to express this time of the year... You will find christmas tree, Santa, cake, stars, gobelin, and a lot more. They work well for background tiling, just as symbols, or for anything else. We hope you like them ! Best size in bitmap is 20pt.

Kuniku is an unconventional sans serif font that sticks to the rules. These can easily fit into a very large set of projects, so add them to your creative ideas and see how they make them stand out. Each character is uniquely crafted and would be amazing to complement any project you're working on. Use it to create beautiful titles, beautiful invitations, stunning logos and more!! Perfect for displays, headers, invitations, save the date, weddings and more! This font is PUA encoded which means you can access all the glyphs and sweeps easily!

New York to London via Europe The hardworking FS Koopman is a crossbred workhorse which draws inspiration from Swiss and Germanic grotesks, American gothics and early British grotesques, but refuses to fit neatly into any of these categories. Its neither one nor the other, but all of the above. Fontsmith designers Andy Lethbridge and Stuart de Rozario decided to take the characteristics they admired from each category and distill them down into one functional family. Neo meets Neue FS Koopman aims to swim against the tide of Helvetica-ish derivatives by bringing some personality and soul to a genre that all too often ends up feeling bland and sterile. FS Koopman subtly embraces the quirkiness and charm often seen in early twentieth century designs but pairs this with the functionality of later pioneers of the genre. It’s a grotesque isn’t it? The term grotesque surfaced around the early 1800s and refers to the early sans serif designs that many initially believed were strange or ‘grotesque’ due to their lack of elegant serifs. Later variations became known as neo-grotesques and this moniker stuck around even after they gained mass popularity. Some American variants became known as gothics. FS Koopman takes cues from all three categories and blends them into one cohesive design.

From tablet to table – from freehand to font – Average Handwriting was designed originally in freehand on paper then onto a tablet with the help of an appropriate app to give it a ‘wet brush’ feel – this was transferred to paper then tweaked PS and only then imported into a font design programme – this is how we work to keep the original flourishes and a freehand feel to the font. Thus, a well-ordered handwriting with both elements of freehand and precision. It looks especially good in lower-case text situations, delivering an original look - there again you may be looking for a new display font for some large graphic projects such as posters, Average Handwriting also works well in these situations, again, delivering an original look.

Figgins and Caslon may be names familiar to many as Type Founders. Indeed they are, but they are perhaps less well known for the emergence of Sans Serif type styles which have become part of our lives since 1889. The first hundred years of this style is celebrated with this design by Adrian Williams, completed in 1989. It echoes many features of the Gothic, Grotesque and Sans Serif models of the period, based particularly on the 1870 Figgins.

Figgins and Caslon may be names familiar to many as Type Founders. Indeed they are, but they are perhaps less well known for the emergence of Sans Serif type styles which have become part of our lives since 1889. The first hundred years of this style is celebrated with this design by Adrian Williams, completed in 1989. It echoes many features of the Gothic, Grotesque and Sans Serif models of the period, based particularly on the 1870 Figgins.

A gentle breeze caressed his face as his body took on the easy posture of a dancer on break. Flickering sparklets of light sprinkled the glass-smooth surface of the aqua liquid on which he floated. His mind wandered; he was only days away from his scheduled departure date. This day was no different from a hundred other days he had spent melded to his windsurfer, skittering along the breadth of the modest lake, soaking up the sun's rays and forgetting about the entire rest of the world. Lake Quannapowitt, and the town of Wakefield, Massachusetts, were familiar to Steve, a long-time resident of the picturesque New England town. This is where he grew up; this is where he married and lived for many years; and this is the place he was preparing to leave, not one week hence. Not generally prone to nostalgia, it was in just such a state he nonetheless found himself once Zephyrus retreated, as was his custom, periodically, while patrolling the resplendent lake. Steve was going to miss the lake, and he was going to miss the town. How many hours of how many days had he spent exactly like this, standing on his motionless board, waiting for his sail to fill, and staring at the lake's shores, its tiny beach, the town Common with its carefully maintained greenery, and equally well-tended gazebo, the Center church - its spire shadow piercing the water's edge, like a scissor-cut the better to begin a full-fabric tear? Yes, he was going to miss this place - this town which all of a sudden had become a place out of time, just as he was about to become a person out of place. Once this idea struck him, he couldn't shake it. He was transported back in time four score years, now watching his ancestors walk along the shore. Nothing in view belied this belief - not the church's century old architecture, not the gazebo frozen in time, nor the timeless sands of the beach, nor the unchanging Common. Everything belonged exactly where it was, and where it always would be. This, he decided, was how he would remember his hometown. And this is when it occurred to Steve to design a typeface that would evoke these images and musings - a typeface with an old-fashioned look, reflected in high crossbars, an x-height small in size relative to its uppercase, and an intangible quality reminiscent of small-town quaintness. Wakefield, the typeface, was born on Lake Quannapowitt in the town for which it was named, shortly before Steve moved away. It is at once a tribute to his birthplace and a keepsake.

Vermont is an outline semi slab serif created by British designer Freda Sack. The serifs of Vermont are typical of slab serif fonts, having the same stroke width as the base strokes and forming a right angle to them. The strong figures of this font still manage to seem light and airy and the marked shading makes them seem almost plastic or sculpted. This class of font appeared at the beginning of the 20th century as an advertisement typeface, rose in popularity through the 1950s and phototypesetting in the 1970s. Vermont should be used exclusively in headlines and displays in larger point sizes.

This typeface comes from a self initiated project called Sápmi, which aims to contribute to keep a group of minority languages alive through solving issues in the education environment. This re-thought edition takes the name of Aanaar and joins our library with a bigger character set and two new weights which complete the typeface providing a big typographic palette as well as adding stylistic two-story a and g for more advanced readers as well as to enable the typeface to be used in other environments. The typeface was originally designed for children’s text books. Analysing kid’s typeface design, we identified some important problems and solved them within the boundaries we had. The main concern in a typeface which will be used by children is letter recognition, as they have not yet fully develop their reading skills. For example, letters like “a” and “g” share a very similar structure in this particular kind of typefaces, where the only distinctive part is the descender of the “g”. It is known that the lower part of the letter is the less important feature when reading, therefore we decided to make a clear distinction between them by having an “a” with a spur on the top right. This also helped distinguishing “a” and “o”. Children typefaces usually have one story “a”, making “a” usually too close to “o”. Additionally we moved the joint in “a” upwards and narrowed very slightly the “a” to make sure they cannot be mistaken. More generally, the x-height is fairly tall and the typeface has a bit of movement which give it a good rhythm helping moving along nicely when reading. Aanaar consists of 5 weights (Light, Regular, Medium, Bold and Black) plus two Italics (Light Italic and Italic).

Oxford Street is a signage font that began as a redrawing of the capital letters used for street nameplates in the borough of Westminster in Central London. The nameplates were designed in 1967 by the Design Research Unit using custom lettering based on Adrian Frutiger’s Univers typeface, a curious combination of Univers 69 Bold Ultra Condensed, a weight that doesn’t seem to exist but which would flatten the long curves of glyphs such as O, C and D, and Universe 67 Bold Condensed with its more rounded lobes on glyphs like B, P and R. Letters were then remodelled to improve their use on street signs. Thin strokes like the inner diagonals of M and N were thickened to create a more monolinear alphabet; the high interior apexes were lowered and the wide joins thinned. The crossbar of the A was lowered, the K was made double junction, and the tail of the Q was given a baseline curve. K-Type Oxford Street continues the process of impertinent improvement and includes myriad minor adjustments and several more conspicuous amendments. The stroke junctions of M and N are further narrowed and their interior apexes modified. The middle apex of the W is narrowed and the glyph is a little more condensed. The C and S are drawn more open, terminals slightly shortened. The K-Type font adds a new lowercase which is also made more monolinear so better suited to signage, loosely based on Univers but also taking inspiration from the Transport typeface both in a taller x-height and character formation. The lowercase L has a curled foot, the k is double junctioned to match the uppercase, and terminals of a, c, e, g and s are drawn shorter for openness and clarity. A full repertoire of Latin Extended-A characters features low-rise diacritics that keep congestion to a minimum in multiple lines of text. The font tips the hat to signage history by including stylistic alternates for M, W and w that have the pointed middles of the earlier MOT street sign typeface. Incidentally, Alistair Hall (‘London Street Signs’, Batsford, 2020) notes that when the manufacturer of signs was changed in 2007, Helvetica Bold Condensed was substituted in place of the custom design, “an unfortunate case of an off-the-peg suit replacing a tailored one” and a blunder that has happily since been rectified, though offending nameplates can still be spotted by discerning font fans.

Brushland was initially born as custom type project, where the goal was to achieve a natural feeling as if it was really written. The project raised some questions, how natural should be this script typeface? How to simulate this writing feeling? For this, four different glyphs were drawn for the same character. This “Feature” or “Behavior”, programmed in the font, combines the variants in the sequence of 1, 2, 3 & 4 and replaces the letters at the time the words are composed, in order to avoid the repetition of glyphs. Through the “Contextual Alternates” OT Feature, the user can decide if they appear or not.

The Fredrick Ullmer Co. in London acted as agent for many typefoundries, and this was one of their offerings. Some of the letters were rather outlandish, so we fearlessly decided to improve them. The result is this dated but pleasant font. The original didn't have a lowercase, so we added it.