Sabana is my first step in font design. A font that is born from the organic, from a creative process that starts from improvisation as a result of my training as an artist. To design Sabana I asked myself the question, why not make a font that emulates my own writing? as I found it fun to see my handwriting on a computer. This font can be used in a wide range of projects such as editorial design, motion graphics, web, advertising and branding where emulating handwriting is a necessity. The font has coverage for more than 200 languages ??derived of the latin alphabet in addition to Cyrillic. Sabana is where I come from, where I am from, a constant on the horizon that is occasionally interrupted by vertical lines and that together make a perfect visual symphony.

I admit: I had a bit of a crazy week when I thought up an drew this font. I broke my arm during kickboxing training on monday, leaving me in a cast - unable to do most everyday things, like getting a good night's sleep (try sleeping with a humongous cast on your arm). Thank goodness, it is my left arm, so I can still draw letters and use my laptop. So… this font has been made entirely using one arm! It is a bit of a horror font - it sort of sums up my mood right now. Glyphs have very little spacing, adding to the evil look of Plague Master. Comes with a lethal amount of diacritics.

RAILHAM is a slab typeface with more than 330 glyphs including uppercase, lowercase, numbers, small caps, accents, punctuation, currencies, etc. Inspired by the tracks of a railroad, with stems that narrow at the top, Railham typeface, like a train looks to the future without forgetting the fundamentals of a long road, detaining in the detail of every element to form a strong, fast and versatile family. Retaking and uniting essential concepts of typography, rounded serifs with especially wide base, forms and counterblocks that complement together, RailHam typeface neatly adapts to any topic, besides being practical and readily legible in small and large formats, joining a select list of modern slab serif fonts.

My eldest son Sam always wanted to visit Japan and he has been saving up for a ticket for years now. We should have traveled there this year, but due to the pandemic, that was impossible. We’re now trying to go next year. Sam and I did make some kind of itinerary and I told him how we were going to get around, as I have been to Japan many times. I told him about the Shinkansen trains, the cute Tram in Nagasaki and the immense subway system in Tokyo. One of the lines in Tokyo is the so-called Yamanote Circle Line, which I have used on numerous occasions. A new font name was born and it stuck to this particular font! Subway Circle is a 100% handmade font. It is rounded, slightly slanted and comes with a sunny disposition. I am sure that, when you use it, you will find your 生きがい… ;-)

Auchentaller was inspired by a travel poster by Josef Maria Auchentaller in 1906. To our knowledge, it was never cast in type. Grado lies on the northern Adriatic, between Venice and Trieste. At one time the port for the important Roman town of Aquileia. With the decline of the Roman Empire, the upper Adriatic region came under the rule of the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, the Byzantines, the Lombards, the Franks, the Germans, the Venetians and finally, in 1796, the Austrian Hapsburgs. So it remained until the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1919, following World War I, when the seaport of Trieste was awarded to Italy. With Trieste came Montefalcone, Aquileia and Grado. The area was marked by years of political tension between Italy and Yugoslavia, exemplified by the d'Annunzio expedition to capture Fiume (Rijeka) in September, 1919. Some basic discussion of the period from 1919 to 1939 may be found in Seton-Watson’s Eastern Europe Between The Wars (Cambridge 1945) and Rothschild’s East Central Europe Between The Two World Wars (Seattle 1974). In 1965 I was traveling by train from Venice to Vienna. Crossing the Alps, the train stopped for customs inspection at the rural Italian-Austrian border, just above Slovenia. We were warned not to get off the train because there were still shooting skirmishes in the area. Through all this, Grado remained literally an island of tranquility, connected to the mainland by a only causeway and lines on a map. Auchentaller not only painted the beach scene at Grado, he moved there, living out the rest of his life in this comfortable little island town. His travel illustration contains the text from which the design of our font Auchentaller is drawn. The text translates: "Seaside resort : Grado / Austrian coastal land". Please see our gallery images to see a map locating Grado, as well as Auchentaller’s painting of the resort. Auchentaller is a monoline all-cap font, light and open in design , with a lot of typically art nouveau letter forms. Included in our font are a number of ligatures. As is frequently seen in designs by German speakers, the umlaut is embedded in the O & U below the tops of the letters. This approach led to two whimsies: a happy umlauted O and a sad umlauted U. This font has a clean, crisp look that is very appealing and very distinctive. Auchentaller 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. Add glyphs to complete standard 1252 Western Europe Code Page. Special glyphs relocated and assigned Unicode codepoints, some in Private Use area. Total of 336 glyphs. 2. Added OpenType GSUB layout features: pnum, liga, salt & ornm. 3. Added 116 kerning pairs. 4. Revised vertical metrics for improved cross-platform line spacing. 5. Revised ‘J’. 6. Minor refinements to various glyph outlines. 7. Inclusion of both tabular & proportional numbers. 8. Inclusion of both standard acute and Polish kreska with choice of alternate accented glyphs for c,n,r,s & z. Please note that some older applications may only be able to access the Western Europe character set (approximately 221 glyphs). 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.

One of my dreams as a type-designer was making a good looking chancery cursive. Full of life, like some of the best calligraphers around the world do on their artworks. With Julian Waters, John Stevens and Denis Brown (just to name a few of them) (1) chancery, or italic script, was transformed into a new, exciting and very fresh style of calligraphy mainly at the end of 20th Century. Dream Script may be that dream named above made true. I have been practicing chancery in the way I learnt from those calligraphers for many years now. Making a font out of my ink-sketches was a tough work, since they were closer of -being art- than of -being type-. However, this font rescues many aspects of handmade calligraphy: You have to look at it really close to notice it is actually a font, and that was one of my goals. The secret of a good looking chancery is on its subtle details: pen angle is constantly changing, even on the strokes which seem straight. Capitals and swashes have to be done a little faster than lowercase letters. The rhythm has to be even, in spite of its playful look. The fact that makes Dream look alive is that it has many alternates per glyph. This makes each word look unique like it happens in calligraphy: you will find alternates for the beginning/ending of a word/phrase, some for the middle of it, some interchangeable. Also, to accompany the script, you will find Dream Caps, which was inspired in the eternally beautiful trajan capitals. Place them like I did on the posters and you will have great results for sure. The font works great in small, middle and big sizes and can be a great selection for magazines, wedding invitations, perfumes, and posters. Close your eyes, and Dream with me... TECHNICAL Dream Script Pro is the most complete style, it contains all the alternates and ligatures (OT programmed, better if you use Adobe applications) If you plan to use the font for text, be sure to activate the less decorative capitals, which are placed in the “salt” group of alternates. Dream Script Standard has less glyphs than the Pro one, it contains just some ligatures for a better legibility. (OT programmed, better if you use Adobe applications) NOTES (1) Not only are they great artists, but also good people, who are always willing to share with their students all what they know. I would also like to thank Ricardo Rousselot, whose work inspired me this time to make “The Dream Script” exlibris; and to Alisara Tareekes, a very talented friend which international calligraphy conferences gave me: She kindly helped me with some tips to make this font better.

Hebden is a ‘Northern’ font. Inspired by the town Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire, the family is a mix of a grotesque and an incised serif. The grot is based on Victorian train station signage and the serif is style that can be spotted in and around the Yorkshire Dales region. Hebden has a nostalgic twist and is ideal for labelling, signage and memorable messages. The grotesque face with its robust angles and warm circular curves recalls the style of traditional English sans-serifs like Caslon’s 2-Line Egyptian. The incised face has strong but sophisticated and natural forms and is based on a wood carved style popular in the early 20th century. The weight of the two faces are are drawn to complement each other creating an evenly balanced combination. Both faces come with caps, lower caps across letters and numerals, and have Western, Central and Eastern European language support.

This type crept up the sense that it was made in Eastern Europe by poorly trained urbanites from a crippled nation, or that it is the remains of a contemporary gothic (like Eckmann) stencil. The choice of what this type signifies is up to the public. Lately I like the idea of 'putting on' (in McLuhan's sense) a genre of idea that is somewhat different from my tradition's beliefs, and fitting a core category of that toward a teleological/eschatological advantage. Therefore postmodernist/apocalyptic carelessness (which I may 'put on' by using this type) is how I abstain from the cravings of immortality, or more so that wanting it is pointless. It’s stands as memento morí; that I will have to die someday. I have to become less, He must become more. Of course, Interzone may signify a classic Joy Division track from Unknown Pleasures as well as the Cold Warish ongoings of conflicted eastern European life. I considered naming this Lunik 9.

Senohraby is an uppercase display typeface inspired by the old sign at Senohraby train station that is now slowly chipping away. Senohraby is available in three interconnected styles that freely various ages of the sign. “Paint” is a more or less preserved font written with a flat brush and featuring slight scratches and errors. The other styles, “Dirt” and “Trash”, follow up on this style and are increasingly marked by age, damage and erosion... In each style one can use simple alternation with lowercase letters, context-based alternation to eliminate repetition of adjacent characters, and a broad range of language support. As a result, each letter offers six variations that can be combined. These can be used as another alternation within a single word or as different bold weights. As a bonus, a fourth, additional style named “Crap” is freely available and as the name implies, it contains a wide array of various impurities.

Back when OpenType hadn't yet opened and Apple was developing the Line Layout Manager called GX Typography I created a test font that I name after my stepdaughter, Kristen (now ITC Kristen). Not wanting to offend my wife I started on a font project and gave her name to this new set of glyphs, Roberta. Unfortunately, the name was already in use so I needed to find another name for the fonts. After September 11th I decided that there were people I'd met during my life who were truly cut from the cloth of the hero. Master Sargent McLemore of the 75th Ranger Battalion was one of these people. I met the Sarge when I was in basic training at Fort Gordon. I saw him 2 weeks before he died in 1970. All of the heroes we see on the silver screen pale in comparison to this man. John Wayne and Clint Eastwood both have played the type well, both could have taken lessons from the Sarge.

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.

Fortezza is a family of fonts inspired by the great masters who have created the Modern Roman style: Firmin Didot (1764 -1836) and Giambattista Bodoni (1740 -1813) Both typefaces can be similar, but a trained and close vision, show clear differences in the final result, like its weight and the degree of transition of the strokes. The type of Didot suggests greater warmth and elegance, they are characterized by extreme contrast in thick strokes and thin strokes, by the use of serifs very thin and by the vertical stress of the letters. while the Bodoni type conveys a greater robustness and hardness. Fortezza brings together the elegance and spirit of both types, but proposes a contemporary vision, establishing a distance with certain features typical of the baroque that was manifested at that time.

Fargo Tuscan is the first of seven typefaces exploring the decorative possibilities of the Tuscan letter form, all of which are releasing in 2017. It’s the most European of the seven- it’s a Mid-Victorian inspired display face which would have been (and is) at home on either side of the Atlantic, unlike some of the others in this batch of Tuscan faces which are distinctly ‘trans-Atlantic’ (we know, that depends on your point of view but we are Greater ALBION Typefounders after all) in flavour. Fargo Tuscan is replete with decorative features, including Swash Capitals, alternate numeric forms and stylistic alternates ideal for the beginning and ending of words. Have some mid-Victorian mid-Atlantic fun with your next design project!

Busted is the very strange and out-of-character outburst of Bill Troop, a guy who was classically trained in everything, from classical piano and literature to classical photography and type design. As far as we could tell, Bill Troop is the kind of guy whose appearance and voice instantly trigger thoughts of black and white photos, fedoras, and pre-industrial age Europe. A few years ago, he even moved from the United States to England, where it took him less than a week to feel at home and start sounding like a Norwich native. Then something happened and the poor dude just snapped. Busted is the controversial result of the blood rushing to his head. If you know what exactly happened to him, please let us know. Concern, consideration and human interest story aside, Busted is a fascinating thing. It is a set of four interchangeable thick outline fonts where the same letter forms turn from wild to wilder to broken to somewhat clean. Mix them up in a setting and you have words that snarl with a sneer. Life's too short. Take it all with a grain of salt. Scream whenever you feel like it. Busted Pro is a single font combining all four character sets, and rigged with an OpenType pseudo-randomizer in the contextual alternates feature, which you can disable or enable anywhere in your setting for maximum visual shock just the way you like it. Works just as well in PAL or SECAM. Don't be fooled by imitations, and don't get caught with your drawers down.

Stadtmitte is a grotesque font with a distinctly industrial flair. It is inspired on a reinterpretation of the Berlin’s vernacular signs and characters created under the DIN 1451 norm. By the early 1900s, german painters and sign makers started to spread this unmistakable way of font drawing used back then on freight trains. Such letter design was both very easy to read and build, hence it started to quickly spread until it became a standard in 1936 for highway signage. Stadtmitte is not aimed to be yet another literal remake of those drawings but rather a revision of shapes and concepts that seeks to transport us to Germany’s industrial way of creating and displaying information, therefore being suitable for a wide scope of design uses, considering its own nature and different available weights. The typeface has 8 weights, ranging from “thin” to “black”, and two versions: "regular" and "italic". Its 16 files contain 618 characters with ligatures, alternates, small caps, old-style and tabular numbers, and case sensitive figures. It supports 219 Latin-based languages, spanning through 212 different countries. Stadtmitte supports this languages: Abenaki, Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Amis, Anuta, Aragonese, Aranese, Aromanian, Arrernte, Arvanitic (Latin), Asturian, Atayal, Aymara, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Bemba, Bikol, Bislama, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Chickasaw, Cimbrian, Cofán, Corsican Creek,Crimean Tatar (Latin),Croatian, Czech, Dawan, Delaware, Dholuo, Drehu, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian Filipino, Finnish, Folkspraak, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Gikuyu, Gooniyandi, Greenlandic (Kalaallisut)Guadeloupean, Creole, Gwich’in, Haitian, Creole, Hän, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hopi, Hotcąk (Latin), Hungarian, Icelandic, Ido, IgboI, locano, Indonesian, Interglossa, Interlingua, Irish, Istro-Romanian, Italian, Jamaican, Javanese (Latin), Jèrriais, Kala Lagaw Ya, Kapampangan (Latin), Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Karelian (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kiribati, Kirundi, Klingon, Ladin, Latin, Latino sine Flexione, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lojban, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Māori, Marquesan, Megleno-Romanian, Meriam Mir, Mirandese, Mohawk, Moldovan, Montagnais, Montenegrin, Murrinh-Patha, Nagamese Creole, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Ngiyambaa, Niuean, Noongar, Norwegian, Novial, Occidental, Occitan, Old Icelandic, Old Norse, Oshiwambo, Ossetian (Latin), Palauan, Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Potawatomi, Q’eqchi’, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Rotokas, Sami (Inari Sami), Sami (Lule Sami), Sami (Northern Sami), Sami (Southern Sami), Samoan, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Latin), Seri, Seychellois Creole, Shawnee, Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Slovio (Latin), Somali, Sorbian (Lower Sorbian), Sorbian (Upper Sorbian), Sotho (Northern), Sotho (Southern), Spanish, Sranan, Sundanese (Latin), Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tokelauan, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Tzotzil, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Volapük, Võro, Wallisian, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Warlpiri, Wayuu, Welsh, Wik-Mungkan, Wiradjuri, Wolof, Xavante, Xhosa, Yapese, Yindjibarndi,

The Face2Face (F2F) series was inspired by the techno sound of the mid-1990s, personal computers and new font creation software. For years, Alexander Branczyk and his friends formed a unique type design collective, which churned out a substantial amount of fresh, new fonts, none of which complied with the traditional rules of typography. Many of these typefaces were used to create layouts for the leading German techno magazine of the 1990s, Frontpage. Branczyk and his fellows would even set in type at 6 points, in order to make it nearly unreadable. It was a pleasure for the kids to read and decrypt these messages! The three fonts in the F2F Czykago family, F2F Czykago Light, F2F Czykago Semi Serif, and F2F Czykago Trans, were all inspired by the Apple system font Chicago. The F2F Czykago family, along with 38 other Face2Face fonts, is included in the TakeType 5 collection from Linotype. Branczyk designed 16 of these himself."

A type designed in a grid, like on display panels Type is not only printed. There were always and still are a number of forms of type versions which function completely differently. Even very early in the history of script there were attempts to combine a few single elements into the diverse forms of individual characters and also efforts to construct the forms of letters within a geometric grid system. The “instructions” of Albrecht Dürer are probably most well-known. But although designers of past centuries assumed the ideal to basically be an artist’s handwritten script, the idea which developed in the course of mechanization was to “build” characters in a building block system only by stringing together one basic element — the so-called grid type was discovered, represented most commonly today by »pixel types.« But even before computers, there were display systems which presented types with the help of a mechanical grid display, like the display panels in public transportation (bus, train) or at airports and train stations. In a streetcar, I met up with a modern variation of this display which reveals the name of each tram stop as it is approached. This system was based on a customary coarse square grid, but the individual squares were also divided again diagonally in four triangles. In this way it is possible to display slants and to simulate round forms more accurately as with only squares. The displayed characters still aren’t comparable to a decent typeface — on the contrary, the lower case letters are surprisingly ugly — but they form a much more legible type than that of ordinary [quadrate] grid types. DeDisplay from ingoFonts is this kind of type, constructed from tiny triangles which are in turn grouped in small squares. The stem widths are formed by two squares; the height of upper case characters is 10, the x-height 7 squares. DeDisplay is available in three versions: DeDisplay 1 is the complex original with spaces between the triangles, DeDisplay 2 forgoes dividing the triangles and thus appears somewhat darker or “bold,” and DeDisplay 3 is to some extent the “black” and doesn’t even include spaces between the individual squares.

Cartier was Canada’s first roman text typeface, created in 1967 to celebrate Canada’s centennial. Its designer, Carl Dair, was one of the country’s most celebrated graphic design pioneers, and a fine designer indeed — but he was not a trained type designer. He had spent a year at the Enschedé type foundry and printing works in the Netherlands, but that probably wasn’t enough to fully grasp all that was required to make an effective text face. It is also possible that Dair simply compromised his own design by not allowing any of the much needed alterations to be made to his working drawings when they were handed over to Linotype for production. Cartier, though a strikingly original oldstyle, never became the influential allround text face it might have been. A display typeface derived from it, Raleigh, was more successful. Realizing that Dair’s design was sound in concept, if not in execution, Rod McDonald began working on a new digital version in 1997. The final family is convincing proof that Cartier could have been the functional text face that Dair originally wanted.

Abdo Salem is the second version of the font FS_Salem which was designed by the type designer Abdulsamie Rajab Salem for Future Soft company fonts. It is a leading company in Arabization field and producing the Arabic and Islamic programs beside the children programs. This font appeared between 1998 and 2000. In this version there were a lot of adjustments to keep the font in its spirit and uniformity between the various characters. Also added some new characters, which gave him another beautiful addition to be used in both title and text designs. Three weights (Light, bold and black) have been created. Then the font was converted to OpenType to support Arabic, Persian and Urdu to be compatible with the various operation systems and modern software. The combination of modern Kufi and Naskh styles and varying between straight and curved parts made it a beautiful typeface appropriate to the titles and text, and able to meet the desire of the user in the design of ads and modern designs of various types of audio and visual.

P22 Klauss Kursiv is the first ever digital revival and expansion of the last face Karl Klauß designed for the Genzsch & Heyse foundry in Stuttgart before he died in 1956. Karl Klauß’s classical training in the graphic arts gave him solid chops to use as a springboard for design ideas that remained relevant among the countless trends fleeting around the turmoil of two world wars. By the mid-1950s, a kind of ornamental deco aesthetic was well on its way into mainstream design in post-war Europe, and demand was high for unique, lively and non-minimal ad faces. Klauß, a reliable designer with a proven track record of calligraphic faces, pushed the envelope on his own calligraphy and designed something that packages elegance in a boldness seldom seen before in luxury scripts. Quite a bit of talent is on display in Klauss Kursiv. In spite of the restraint this kind of design imposes on itself almost by default, the interplay between thick and thin never seems forced or challenging. Clear, natural strokes build a compact alphabet that demonstrates the wrist control of a veteran calligrapher. Creative nib angling segues into very clever start-and-stop constructs to make attractive forms that work quite well together, yet stand well to individual scrutiny. P22 Klauss Kursiv comes with a load of built-in alternates and ligatures in a font of over 470 glyphs, providing extended support for Latin languages.

The graffiti on freight trains inspired Bomr. The large top left serifs add flair and sparkle. For added effect, use capitals in the midst of a word or go completely crazy and mix upper and lower case. Some letter combinations in OpenType-savvy programs are automatically substituted with custom letter/number pairs for an intriguing effect. 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 late-19th-century Prussian-American printer and publisher Louis Prang, the “father of the American Christmas card”, was well-known for his efforts to improve art education in the United States. He published many instructional books and even founded a training school for art teachers. One of the books he published included a series of alphabets for sign painters, lithographers, illuminators, architects and civil engineers. There was nothing truly original there — in the book’s preface, Prang says that the alphabets were “based on foreign forms and adapted for American taste”. The one alphabet that caught my attention in that book was one simply called “Italic”. It’s a high- contrast modern, a Didone really, but with an interesting little twist: the lowercase is almost entirely connected, which makes for an interesting mix of modern typography and classic calligraphy. That stuff is right up my alley now. Whenever my eyes happen on a modern, it’s easy, even almost impulsive for me to envision swashes coming out of serifs and terminals. The caps melt and the minuscules dance with them. And so I brought my vision to life. Prangs is an italic set of three weights, each containing more than 1400 glyphs with plenty of OpenType features and Latin language support. This set celebrates the convergence of three centuries of fancy display alphabets. These fonts should work wherever moderns are used to elevate and scripts are used to appeal — namely today’s branding, packaging and glossy publications.

IngrimayneType has put letters inside a variety of objects, including bowling pins, book covers, coffee mugs, teapots, pumpkins, Christmas ornaments, train cars, tombstones, old bottles, circles, and rectangles. In each case the letters were placed on a single shape. The use of the Opentype feature of contextual alternatives makes it easy to use two different but alternating shapes. ButterflyWingz puts its letters on the right and left wings of a butterfly. The wings provide a large surface for drawing letters, but they have a odd shape so letters must be distorted to fit. The wings are symmetrical but some letters are not, so the right and left wing versions of the same letter are sometimes quite different. Without the contextual alternative feature one could design a typeface like ButterflyWingz but the user would have to alternate upper and lower case keys. With contextual alternatives turned on, the computer automatically alternates the letters creating a line of complete butterflies. Turning on the Opentype feature stylistic styles one (ss01) replaces the empty spaces with empty wings. However, sometimes an empty wing at the end of a line is unwanted and it can be removed by changing the typeface or by turning off the stylistic style for that character. The family contains two styles, a filled style and an outline style. They can be used separately or together in layers to add color. (Empty wings are on the logicalnot and registered characters.) ButterflyWingz is hard to read and should be used in small doses for decorative effects.

Smart, legible and elegant, Gravesend Sans is a based on the unique typeface used for the iconic grass-green signage for the Southern Railway. In existence from 1923 to 1948, when the network was nationalised, the Southern Railway linked London with the Channel ports, South West England, the South coast resorts and Kent. The same design was also used for the ‘hawkeye’ signs on the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, differentiated by black letters on a yellow background. Reference for each letter was taken from vintage ‘target’ station nameplates and other platform signage. The rarest letters were the Q, seen in Queens Road Battersea, the X, seen in East Brixton, and the Z, used in Maze Hill, site of an infamous train crash in 1958. Being hand-made, the letters often differ in width and thickness. There was no lower case. The Bluebell Railway, a heritage steam line, runs over part of the old Southern Railway network and uses a very similar type. The design of the numbers differed considerably, but here have been taken from the Device 112 Hours font Smokebox. As well identifying platforms, they were used on the front of the steam engine’s smokebox, hence the name, and stylistically are more in keeping with the letters than some of the squarer versions that can be seen in old photographs. William Caslon IV is credited with the first Latin sans-serif type, shown in a 1816 Caslon specimen book. ‘Two Lines English Egyptian’, as it was called, was caps-only, and there are several other correlations between that type design and this one. Includes a selection of authentic arrows and manicules, plus abbreviated ligatures such as ‘St.’ (Saint or Street) ‘Rd.’ (Road) and ‘Jn.’ (Junction). The Cameo version includes many graphic banner elements that can be freely combined.

Michael Hoffmann manufactures digital fonts for 30 years. At URW++ he contributed to the technological progress. Over the years, he also specialized in the ideal representation of fonts on screen and the complex assembly of international fonts with scripts of all countries. In his latest project he put the emphasis on developing a highly readable typeface. Less interested in the design as in the functionality of this typeface, he designed Arsapia which he has now installed as a system font on all his computers. Michael Hoffmann studied Japanology at the University of Hamburg and traveled in the early years of his professional activity frequently to Japan, there to train the IKARUS font production tools to Japanese customers. In his spare time he plays guitar or golf depending on the weather. The typeface Arsapia has been designed in such a way that all three font styles Light, Regular and Bold have the same width. When a user therefore opts for the use of Arsapia Light, even though he has already written his text in Regular, nothing changes with respect to the letter tracking. When choosing the Bold for emphasis: Nothing changes except the blackness of the letters. A font change does not engender unwanted line and page breaks of itself. All letters can be clearly distinguished from each other. 1 l I O 0 are all different. For programmers and lovers of monospaced fonts Michael Hoffmann has developed a fourth typeface: Arsapia Mono. This is the perfect terminal font.

Rabenau (formerly Lucinde), the distinctly warm and legible type family For 30 years the graphic designer Axel Bertram worked at creating his typefaces: He developed complete new alphabets for magazines and typewriters as well as for the constant demand for typefaces for use by commercial artists. He has developed wall charts the size of advertising posters as teaching aids for training commercial and graphic artists to write in a clean, classic cursive script. In the eighties he used the American Chyron computer to design a screen font for television. In the mid-nineties he discovered for himself the fabulous possibilities offered by the Fontographer font software program and explored them playfully. From the results of these experiments, Axel Bertram selected a design for further development. From 2003 onwards the calligrapher and type designer Andreas Frohloff collaborated with him on the further development and production of the 16 fonts of the Rabenau™ typeface family.The Rabenau font was inspired by many factors: From the fonts used as book covers to typewriter fonts and even printed material from England dating from the beginning of the nineteenth century (e.g. those used by the skilled printer William Bulmer), Rabenau's relatively high contrast is offset by some organic tapers, subtley rounded bracketed serifs, and a fairly generous x-height. This makes for a typeface that looks especially good in print. Its broad repertoire of weights and styles - Condensed, Poster, and Shadow - give it added versatility, and make it ideal for setting both display and text in the same typeface. Throughout the heavier weights, the contrast is maintained. The Poster Italic sparkles, and will make a fine display type for dynamic headlines, or logotypes. This family of sixteen fonts works beautifully together. All Rabenau font styles have a large set of ligatures and thus cover typical letter combinations in many European languages. Besides the standard ligatures for ff, fi and fl, letter connections are also available for tt, th and fj or ffi, ffl and ffk. The range is completed with lovely arched transitions for the characters st, ck or ct. The latter gives the font that certain something, both in continuous text and above all in headlines.

First Ladies is a unique collection of signatures of almost all of the First Ladies of the United States plus the First Lady of the Confederacy in a high-quality font. A must-have for autograph collectors, desktop publishers, lovers of history, or anyone who has ever dreamed of sending a letter, card, or e-mail “signed” as if by one of these famous women. This font includes 45 signatures for the following First Ladies: Martha Dandridge Custis Washington, Abigail Smith Adams, Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson, Dolley Payne Todd Madison, Elizabeth Kortright Monroe, Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams, Rachel Donelson Jackson, Anna Tuthill Symmes Harrison, Julia Gardiner Tyler, Sarah Childress Polk, Margaret Mackall Smith Taylor, Abigail Powers Fillmore, Jane Means Appleton Pierce, Harriet Lane, Mary Todd Lincoln, Eliza McCardle Johnson, Julia Dent Grant, Lucy Ware Webb Hayes, Lucretia Rudolph Garfield, Ellen Lewis Herndon Arthur, Frances Folsom Cleveland, Caroline Lavinia Scott Harrison, Frances Folsom Cleveland, Ida Saxton McKinley, Edith Kermit Cardow Roosevelt, Helen Herron Taft, Ellen Axson Wilson, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, Florence Kling Harding, Grace Anna Goodhue Coolidge, Lou Henry Hoover, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, Elizabeth Virginia Wallace Truman, Mamie Geneva Doud Eisenhower, Jacqueline Lee Bouvier Kennedy, Claudia Taylor (Lady Bird) Johnson, Patricia Ryan Nixon, Elizabeth Bloomer Ford, Rosalynn Smith Carter, Nancy Davis Reagan, Barbara Pierce Bush, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Laura Welch Bush, Michelle Obama, and Varina Howell Davis (First Lady of the Confederacy). This font behaves exactly like any other font. Each signature is mapped to a regular character on your keyboard. Open any Windows application, select the installed font, and type a letter, and the signature will appear at that point on the page. Painstaking craftsmanship and an incredible collection of hard-to-find signatures go into this one-of-a-kind font. Comes with a character map.

Jantar Flow is a humanist sanserif type family tailored for continuous reading for both printing and screen. With its large x-height and low contrast it also performs very well in captions, side notes, and short paragraphs set in small sizes. Jantar Flow Italic is distinct and readable. Following a proper italic construction, it shows the fun side of the family yet keeps the features of the upright. Jantar Flow – as well as its teammate Jantar Sharp – comes in seven weights from ExtraLight to Heavy, each with accompanying italics. It has a tabular and proportional set of figures in both old style and lining options, and also a special set of hybrid figures sitting between x-height and capitals. Superscripts and subscripts are provided together with a vast collection of diacritics covering all European languages as well as a set of case-sensitive characters. Jantar, the pairing superfamily. ‘Jantar’ is an old Polish name for ‘amber’, a fossilised resin – a substance that is robust and organic at the same time. These qualities somehow reflect the feeling behind the Jantar families, ‘Flow’ and ‘Sharp’. Jantar Flow was designed along with Jantar Sharp. As part of the Jantar superfamily these two faces are perfectly paired: though not based on the same skeleton, they share the same design parameters and the same character set, but each one works independently with its peculiar features. Designed for publishing for print and web, as well as for branding, the Jantar superfamily was inspired by common font pairings of the digital age like Helvetica/Times or Verdana/Georgia. Jantar Flow and Jantar Sharp communicate with individual yet complementing voices, just like two trained acrobats can perform alone but also know well how to perform together.

“Safety first!” claimed the sign. The janitor huffed, and continued mopping up the nuclear sludge from the floorboards. Just another day in the wasteland. Industrial Spill is available in three destructive styles: - Regular (great for those warning signs that everyone ignores when rummaging for salvage) - Ooze (reminds you to always clean up after contaminated muck covers the floor) - Wasteland (gives that wonderful feel of wandering around a desolate landscape) Please note that Industrial Spill Wasteland is highly detailed, realistic texturing. It may render slowly in older applications. Each font includes: - A complete set of uppercase and lowercase letters, basic punctuation, numerals and currency figures, and diacritics - Stylistic Opentype Alternates to avoid letter crashing - Punctuation shifts in All-Caps scenarios for better placement - Western Europe language support Need an extended license? Simply email us at hello@sajatypeworks.com and we’ll be happy to help! A collaboration between Dave Savage of Savage Monsters and Aaron Bell of Saja Typeworks. Get in touch: We’re here to help! If you have any questions or need assistance, please DM or contact us via hello@sajatypeworks.com Languages supported: Abneki, Afaan Oromo, Afar, Albanian, Alsatian, Amis, Anuta, Aragonese, Aranese, Arrernte, Arvanitic (Latin), Asturian, Aymara, Basque, Bikol, Bislama, Breton, Cape Verdean Creole, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chickasaw, Cofán, Corsican, Dawan, Delaware, Dholuo, Drehu, English, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Folkspraak, French, Frisian, Friulian, Galician, Genoese, German, Gooniyandi, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hän, Hiligaynon, Hopi, Ido, Ilocano, Indonesian, Interglossa, Interlingua, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Javanese (Latin), Jèrriais, Kala Kagaw Ya, Kapampangan (Latin), Kaqchikel, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kiribati, Kirundi, Klingon, Latin, Lojban, Lombard, Makhuwa, Malay, Manx, Marquesan, Meriam Mir, Mohawk, Montagnais, Murrinh-Patha, Nagamese Creole, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Ngiyambaa, Norweigan, Novial, Occidental, Occitan, Oshiwambo, Palauan, Papiamento, Piedmontese, Portuguese, Potawatomi, Q’eqchi’, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romansh, Rotokas, Sami (Southern Sami), Samoan, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Seri, Seychellois Creole, Shawnee, Shona, Sicilian, Slovio (Latin), Somali, Sotho, Spanish, Sranan, Sundanese (Latin), Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tokelauan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Tzotzil, Uzbek (Latin), Volapük, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Warlpiri, Wayuu, Welsh, Wik-Mungkan, Wiradjuri, Xhosa, Yapese, Yindjibarndi, Zapotec, Zulu.

Tiresias was designed for subtitling by Dr. John Gill from the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB), in the United Kingdom. The Tiresias font is designed to have characters that are easy to distinguish from each other, especially important for the visually impaired. The following key factors were considered during the design process: character shapes, relative weight of character stokes, intercharacter spacing, and aspect ratios that affect the maximum size at which the type could be used. The benefits of the Tiresias font are greatest on lower resolution displays, such as televisions, train and airline information terminals, and low resolution displays on wireless communication and handheld devices. InfoFont is for printed instructions on public terminals where legibility is the primary consideration; these instructions are often read at a distance of 30 to 70 cm. Infofont is not designed for large quantities of text. The Tiresias LPfont is a large print typeface specifically designed for people with low vision. Large print publications should be designed to specifically help with reading problems, and should not just be an enlarged version of the ordinary print. The Tiresias LPfont family, made up of roman, italic, and bold weights, was designed to address and solve these issues. The RNIB developed PCfont for people with low vision to use on computer screens. It is designed for use at larger sizes only. PCfont includes delta hinting technology in the font to ensure pixel-perfect display at key sizes. Signfont is for fixed (not internally illuminated) signage. The recommended usage is white or yellow characters on a matt dark background. Note that the “Z” versions have slashed zeroes, and are identical in all other respects. These faces were developed together with Dr. John Gill of the National Institute of the Blind, Dr. Janet Silver; optometrist of Moorfields Eye Hospital, Chris Sharville of Laker Sharville Design Associates, and Peter O'Donnell; type consultant. Tiresias himself is a figure from Greek mythology, a blind prophet from Thebes.

Ornaments family with four different sets plus a decorative capitals font from the rare, valuable and amazing Allerlei Zierat book from Schelter & Gieseck (1902). A research and free interpretation by Intellecta Design. This encyclopedic specimen book of the Leipzig, Germany type foundry and printing supply house J.G. Schelter & Giesecke features, as the title indicates, all kinds of decoration for supplying printing of every type. On the title page, the firm boasts winning grand prize in 1900 in Paris (presumably at the Exposition Universelle). It is hard to do justice in a short description to the variety of styles (traditional, Jugenstil, etc.) and categories (certificates, letterheads, borders, ornaments, exotic motifs, flowers, animals, silhouettes, menus, greeting cards, vignettes humorous and otherwise, images of bicyclists, occupational symbols, portraits, Classical figures, religious art, heraldry, ships, trains, athletes, etc., etc.) offered in this volume. Some of the examples are printed in color, most are in black-and-white. The Jugenstil cover of this copy shows minor wear and soiling. The plate of “Gust. Carlsson & Co., Stockholm” is attached to the front pastedown. A small fraction of pages show minor soiling, a pencil notation or a short closed tear. Two of the fold-outs at the back have a little more damage-one is missing a 1x2 inch piece along the margin, the other has a 3-inch closed tear and an edge which is crumpled. A rare specimen from the Intellecta rare books library.

Rahere Esoteric is a gothic-flavoured, quasi-Roman display font with an eccentric persona and more quirks than a Tim Burton film. A member of the extended Rahere typeface family, it’s the enigmatic cousin of Rahere Roman Display & Rahere Sans. This is a niche display font that doesn’t try to please everyone. Rahere Esoteric revels in its mystical aura, using a bewildering array of ligatures to magically transmute itself as characters loop, curl, jerk and strut, randomly connecting and disconnecting into words like a retro-futuristic steam train clattering along a disused railway track, challenging and delighting the reader at the same time. To add more sparkle, there are alternatives, inferior and superior caps plus a [Wicca] basketful of symbols, ornaments, weird faces and even a snake-infused ampersand. Whilst Rahere Esoteric has been designed primarily as an all-caps font, the lowercase slots contain small caps with corresponding numerals. However, because this is an arcane, unpredictable font, order and regularity are frowned upon, which means there are no tabular numerals – so company reports or accounts are a solid no! Unless they’re for the Golden Circle of Alchemists PLC or Gothic Blackstar Corporation. It is ideal for all things pagan, esoteric, alchemy, other-worldly or magic-related projects and particularly useful for music genres across the Gothic / Darkwave / Ethereal spectrum. What about legibility? Hey, look into my eyes: Esoteric is all about the mystique. If a secondary font is needed for the important stuff, I recommend its cousin, Rahere Sans, which pairs beautifully with this display font and is perfect for long passages or small text. The initial idea for Rahere Esoteric came about during a visit to Whitby, a small coastal town in Yorkshire, UK and famous for its inclusion in Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula. A Steampunk festival was in full swing and the narrow streets of the town centre were teeming with people adorned in a glorious fusion of clothing and accessories influenced by a love of 19th-century life, science fiction, horror, fashion and art. I was fascinated by the juxtapositions of colour, patterns, material and style – archaic mechanical Sci-fi, gothic, the American Wild West and romantic Victorian. But what intrigued me the most, somehow, all the disparate elements worked as a whole. Thus, like Frankenstein, this font jolted into existence. Supported languages include Western Europe, Vietnamese, Central/Eastern Europe, Baltic, Turkish and Romanian.

Handmade Mr Moustache™ is designed for Great Type. · Extra thin letters, condensed and with a handwritten touch, Mr Moustache gives a warm and friendly feeling to your layout. Mix upper- and lowercase letters according to your own liking. Furthermore, choose between a hand-drawn Unicase and an almost Unicase appearance. Use Mr Moustache Display for headlines and anything BIG. Use Mr Moustache Text for small type sizes or large volumes of text. · Mr Moustache is accompanied by frames, ornaments and dingbats in regular and solid, that can be layered for multicolored effects, providing endless design-possibilities. Please download MrMoustacheAccessories.pdf to get a complete overview. If you prefer the document in Indesign, please send an email to office@buerofliegenpilz.at · Mr Moustache offers OpenType features, including contextual alternates and stylistic sets. The font family works best with frame-based layout programs that support full OpenType functionality. · For Mr Moustache Frames please note: The glyph preview in your design application may be a bit confusing due to the size of the "letters". Please download the MrMoustacheAccessories.pdf which shows all possible frame parts. Here you can easily copy and paste all the parts you need. · View other fonts from Georg Herold-Wildfellner: Sofa Serif | Sofa Sans | Mila Script Pro | Pinto | Supernett | Mr Moustache | Aeronaut | Ivory | Weingut · Language Report for MrMoustache / 175 languages supported: Abenaki, Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Amis, Anuta, Aragonese, Aranese, Aromanian, Arrernte, Arvanitic, Asturian, Aymara, Basque, Bikol, Bislama, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chickasaw, Cimbrian, Cofan, Corsican, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Delaware, Dholuo, Drehu, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, Folkspraak, French, Frisian, Friulian, Galician, Genoese, German, Gooniyandi, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean, Gwichin, Haitian Creole, Han, Hiligaynon, Hopi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ido, Ilocano, Indonesian, Interglossa, Interlingua, Irish, Istroromanian, Italian, Jamaican, Javanese, Jerriais, Kala Lagaw Ya, Kapampangan, Kaqchikel, Karelian, Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kiribati, Kirundi, Klingon, Ladin, Latin, Latino Sine, Lojban, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Makhuwa, Malay, Manx, Marquesan, Meglenoromanian, Meriam Mir, Mohawk, Moldovan, Montagnais, Montenegrin, Murrinhpatha, Nagamese Creole, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Ngiyambaa, Norwegian, Novial, Occidental, Occitan, Oshiwambo, Ossetian, Palauan, Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Potawatomi, Qeqchi, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Rotokas, Sami Lule, Sami Southern, Samoan, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian, Seri, Seychellois, Shawnee, Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Slovio, Somali, Sorbian Lower, Sorbian Upper, Sotho Northern, Sotho Southern, Spanish, Sranan, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tokelauan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Tzotzil, Uzbek, Venetian, Vepsian, Volapuk, Voro, Walloon, Waraywaray, Warlpiri, Wayuu, Wikmungkan, Wiradjuri, Xhosa, Yapese, Yindjibarndi, Zapotec, Zulu, Zuni

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" "

Pure and not-so-simple Maybe it’s the air of purity, openness and transparency that they transmit, but geometric typefaces are more popular than ever among leading brands. Based on near-perfect circles, triangles and squares, geometric letterforms look uncomplicated, even though making them readable is anything but – something the designers of the first wave of geometric fonts discovered nearly a century ago. Many of the world’s most recognisable brands in technology, retail, travel, food, manufacturing and other industries continue to be drawn to the straightforward, honest character that geometric fonts convey. Fontsmith set out in 2015 to develop a typeface in the same tradition, but optimised for the demands of modern brands – online and offline usage, readability and accessibility. And, of course, with the all-important Fontsmith x-factor built in. FS Lucas is the bold and deceptively simple result. Handle with care The letterforms of FS Lucas are round and generous, along the lines of Trajan Column lettering stripped of its serifs. But beware their thorns. Their designer, Stuart de Rozario, who also crafted the award-winning FS Millbank, wanted a contrast between spiky and soft, giving sharp apexes to the more angular letterforms, such as A, M, N, v, w and z. Among his inspirations were the colourful, geometric compositions of Frank Stella, the 1920s art deco poster designs of AM Cassandre, and the triangular cosmic element symbol, which led him to tackle the capital A first, instead of the usual H. The proportions and angles of the triangular form would set the template for many of the other characters. It was this form, and the light-scattering effects of triangular prisms, that lit the path to a name for the typeface: Lucas is derived from lux, the Latin word for light. Recommended reading Early geometric typefaces were accused of putting mathematical integrity before readability. FS Lucas achieves the trick of appearing geometric, while taking the edge off elements that make reading difficult. Perfectly circlular shapes don’t read well. The way around that is to slightly thicken the vertical strokes, and pull out the curves at the corners to compensate; the O and o of FS Lucas are optical illusions. Pointed apexes aren’t as sharp as they look; the flattened tips are an essential design feature. And distinctive details such as the open terminals of the c, e, f, g, j, r and s, and the x-height bar on the i and j, aid legibility, especially on-screen. These and many other features, the product of sketching the letterforms in the first instance by hand rather than mapping them out mechanically by computer, give FS Lucas the built-in humanity and character that make it a better, easier read all-round. Marks of distinction Unlike some of its more buttoned-up geometric bedfellows, FS Lucas can’t contain its natural personality and quirks: the flick of the foot of the l, for example, and the flattish tail on the g and j. The unusual bar on the J improves character recognition, and the G is circular, without a straight stem. There’s a touch of Fontsmith about the t, too, with the curve across the left cross section in the lighter weights, and the ampersand is one of a kind. There’s a lot to like about Lucas. With its 9 weights, perfect proportions and soft but spiky take on the classic geometric font, it’s a typeface that could light up any brand.

Pure and not-so-simple Maybe it’s the air of purity, openness and transparency that they transmit, but geometric typefaces are more popular than ever among leading brands. Based on near-perfect circles, triangles and squares, geometric letterforms look uncomplicated, even though making them readable is anything but – something the designers of the first wave of geometric fonts discovered nearly a century ago. Many of the world’s most recognisable brands in technology, retail, travel, food, manufacturing and other industries continue to be drawn to the straightforward, honest character that geometric fonts convey. Fontsmith set out in 2015 to develop a typeface in the same tradition, but optimised for the demands of modern brands – online and offline usage, readability and accessibility. And, of course, with the all-important Fontsmith x-factor built in. FS Lucas is the bold and deceptively simple result. Handle with care The letterforms of FS Lucas are round and generous, along the lines of Trajan Column lettering stripped of its serifs. But beware their thorns. Their designer, Stuart de Rozario, who also crafted the award-winning FS Millbank, wanted a contrast between spiky and soft, giving sharp apexes to the more angular letterforms, such as A, M, N, v, w and z. Among his inspirations were the colourful, geometric compositions of Frank Stella, the 1920s art deco poster designs of AM Cassandre, and the triangular cosmic element symbol, which led him to tackle the capital A first, instead of the usual H. The proportions and angles of the triangular form would set the template for many of the other characters. It was this form, and the light-scattering effects of triangular prisms, that lit the path to a name for the typeface: Lucas is derived from lux, the Latin word for light. Recommended reading Early geometric typefaces were accused of putting mathematical integrity before readability. FS Lucas achieves the trick of appearing geometric, while taking the edge off elements that make reading difficult. Perfectly circlular shapes don’t read well. The way around that is to slightly thicken the vertical strokes, and pull out the curves at the corners to compensate; the O and o of FS Lucas are optical illusions. Pointed apexes aren’t as sharp as they look; the flattened tips are an essential design feature. And distinctive details such as the open terminals of the c, e, f, g, j, r and s, and the x-height bar on the i and j, aid legibility, especially on-screen. These and many other features, the product of sketching the letterforms in the first instance by hand rather than mapping them out mechanically by computer, give FS Lucas the built-in humanity and character that make it a better, easier read all-round. Marks of distinction Unlike some of its more buttoned-up geometric bedfellows, FS Lucas can’t contain its natural personality and quirks: the flick of the foot of the l, for example, and the flattish tail on the g and j. The unusual bar on the J improves character recognition, and the G is circular, without a straight stem. There’s a touch of Fontsmith about the t, too, with the curve across the left cross section in the lighter weights, and the ampersand is one of a kind. There’s a lot to like about Lucas. With its 9 weights, perfect proportions and soft but spiky take on the classic geometric font, it’s a typeface that could light up any brand.