I was commissioned by the Emporium (now Macys) to digitize Radiant Bold Extra Condensed (originally designed by Robert Middleton in 1940) for use in their Sunday supplement to the San Francisco Examiner. For several years, I stubbornly refused to add the lowercase letters to the font, because I thought it looked best just used with caps, but finally relented, added the lowercase letters and at the same time created two more weights as well: Light and Medium. Used very large and carefully, these faces can be quite elegant.

Qonora is an innovative new sans-serif text face that combines flowing, almost calligraphic strokes with a post-modern sensibility for a look that works as well on the printed page as it does on screen. Its comfortable proportions and no-nonsense streamlining (note the lack of spurs, serifs or any unnecessary ornamentation) make it an excellent choice for legibility even at very small point sizes. Qonora includes a true italic, drawn independently from the Roman. Strokes for the italic have been re-weighted to complement the Roman, and idiosyncratic italic glyphs have been substituted where appropriate. The typeface’s extensive Hebrew implementation (including diacritics and cantillation marks) is an important part of its character. The Latin, Cyrillic and Greek ranges of the face maintain a consistent ethic of form and function.

Pilgrim is a re-cut of a Linotype face that Eric Gill originally designed for a book published by the Limited Edition Club of New York. Admired for its tranquil dignity, the Pilgrim type is both firm and elegant. Its general appearance resembles that of Gill’s Joanna font family. The contrast of the font is not very strong. The serifs are bracketed. Eric Gill, who designed the type on which Pilgrim is closely based, observed one sort of model for his lettering - the incised monumental letter of Roman origin. This is clearly seen in his capitals, but is also true of his lowercase letters, which have little of the calligraphic or engraved qualities of most other type designs. Gill’s types are Roman in the classic sense, yet also particular to Gill himself.

Sheridan Gothic, also known as Grant Antique, is a quaint design produced in the late nineteenth century. Its proportions are in keeping with extra condensed faces of the times. Its uppercase letters are quite narrow. Its lowercase letters are equally narrow and tall. This pleasant and enduring design contains a touch of novelty, too. Swelled terminal flourishes on such characters as C, J, S, c, e, r, and s help add interest and warmth to what is basically a friendly old soul. Sheridan Gothic is now available in the OpenType Std format. Some new stylistic alternates have been added to this OpenType version. Advanced features work in current versions of Adobe Creative Suite InDesign, Creative Suite Illustrator, and Quark XPress. Check for OpenType advanced feature support in other applications as it gradually becomes available with upgrades.

Peter Schmidt, well-known designer from Hamburg, browsed in a fashion magazine on a return flight from the United States. At that time he was thinking about a logo for a philharmonic orchestra. In the magazine, he noticed some interesting typography. He removed the page from the magazine and sent it later to Peter Langpeter. That was the inspiration for the creation of the logo. Since Peter Langpeter really liked the classic aesthetics of the resulting letters, he developed a whole new alphabet of it. Initially, only capital letters. Now he has completed this exceptionally beautiful font.

In the 1960s it was a popular trend to personalize one’s possessions with your initials. From wallets and handbags to eyeglasses; from luggage to even cars, initial personalization was the fad of the time. The British division of Gulf Oil offered for sale a set of gold metallic stick-on initials for 25 pence, complete with two Gulf logos so the company could get some extra advertising mileage out of the promotion. These extra-wide, bold initials served as the idea model for Personalization JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Kisik is a handwritten font. I got a request to put my handwriting into a font, so I decided to take the challenge and design a whole typeface with three different weights (light, regular, bold) and 638 glyphs to cover all 104 Latin languages. This is my first time making a font. Hope you'll enjoy it. I sure did making it. Check out the listing of glyphs if you can use this font in your work. Otherwise don’t hold back writing to tanjagawish@gmail.com and I’ll create them.