A sign of something better When designer Stuart de Rozario surveyed the fonts used in signage on London’s public transport systems, he reached a dead end. They seemed staid, sterile, lacking in personality, and ill-suited to use by modern brands. He was pointed in another direction entirely. ‘The driving force behind my thoughts was to design something more current and fresh without compromising legibility and clarity. A font with both personality and function, that’s versatile and large and small sizes, and effortless to read, but which also says something new.’ Speed reading Late for a meeting and can’t find your way? Trying to catch a flight? Lost in a hospital? Reading signs is a different business to reading a book or a newspaper. Text on signs needs to be deciphered quickly and effortlessly. So the legibility criteria for signage letterforms are different to those for normal reading, too. Throughout FS Millbank’s uppercase and lowercase alphabets, characters have been given features for extra definition, including: wide ink traps on the A, K, M, V, W, X and Y; a serifed i, accentuated spurs on the a, d, l u; and different x-height shapes on the b, g, p and q. Distinctive forms and generous, open internal shapes all help the quick reading of sign text, and wide, open terminals and counters allow similar letter shapes to be distinguished easily when viewed at different angles. Running down a corridor, maybe... Positive/negative Standard type tends to glow on the kind of dark backgrounds often used for signage, and look heavier than its true weight. To correct the imbalance caused by this optical trick, special weights of the typeface have to be drawn for these ‘negative’, light-on-dark applications. These are lighter than their comparable positive weights to overcome the ‘glow’ effect. After extensive tests of the negative weights, at all sizes, we achieved the right optical balance. Glowing, glowing, gone. Icons This wouldn’t be a signage typeface without its own set of icons, or symbols, to help people find what they’re looking for. So, to sit alongside the positive and negative fonts, we’ve created a comprehensive set of 172 icons, covering a wide range of applications from transport and user interface to information and directional. Designed within the typeface capital height, they sit on the baseline and are spaced centrally.

A FEW THOUGHTS Indie is a trendy script, result of the wide range of possibilities that can be achieved using a pointed brush. (1) “You Only Live Once” say The Strokes, (to me, symbols of indie music) so, what would represent that sensation of volatility better than a brush? As you may already know, this time inspiration came from hipsters and indies around us: We may sometimes criticise them, we may sometimes want to be like them, but the truth is that the universo gráfico they generated these past years is gigantic, full of colour and variations. (2) Brush lettering and Sign painting are fields I've been fond of since I started as a designer. Nowadays, these styles are getting a lot of attention and maybe it’s due to the undeniable mark of life that is materialised when using a brush. This tool is so expressive that shows the passions and fears of the artist, and materialises that idea of “living the present”, so popular in this era. When you see Indie, you think of skaters, rollers, surfers, hiphop dancers, street artists, summer, and why not? California beaches. So if you feel life is only one, it’s high time you got Indie into your fonts' collection! STYLES Indie comes in 4 styles plus another one which consists only in capitals. Indie; Indie Shade; Indie Shade Solo; Indie Inline are all open-type programmed and have exactly the same glyphs and metrics, so you can combine them without probem. (I.E. You may use Indie Inline, then write the same word using Indie Shade Solo, and finally put them together). In applications such as Adobe Illustrator, the font has nice results when fi ligatures is activated. However, if you want a more casual look, activate the contextual and the decorative ligatures. NOTES 1. After several years of practicing calligraphy I can say that to me, there’s nothing more satisfying than being able to create fonts out of your own handlettering. I owe a lot of this brush-style to Carl Rohrs. He was the very first calligrapher who taught it to me. His style is unique and what he can do with a brush is truly marvelous. I'm serious. 2. In spite of some particular cases, I can say I'm happy to live in a present in which Typography is living a kind of Renaissance along with Lettering. Like it happened with W. Morris a hundred years ago, handcrafts are being revalued/reborn, and some of this may be happening thanks to these indie designers that, trying to be unique, gave new/fresh air to different areas of graphic design.

A very expanded sans serif font in capital letters inspired by the inscription on a bank note Old bank notes tend to have a very typical typography. Usually they carry decorative and elaborately designed markings. For one thing, they must be practically impossible to forge and for another, they should make a respectable and legitimate impression. And in the days of copper and steel engravings, that meant nothing less than creating ornate, shaded or otherwise complicated scripts. Designing the appropriate script was literally in the hands of the engraver. That’s why I noticed this bank note from 1948. It is the first 20 mark bill in the then newly created currency ”Deutsche Mark.“ All other bank notes of the 1948 series show daintier forms of typography with an obvious tendency toward modern face. The 1949 series which followed shortly thereafter reveals the more complicated script as well. For whatever reason, only this 20 mark bill displays this extremely expanded sans serif variation of the otherwise Roman form applied. This peculiarity led me in the year 2010 to create a complete font from the single word ”Banknote.“ Back to those days in the 40’s, the initial edition of DM bank notes was carried out by a special US-American printer who was under pressure of completing on time and whose engravers not only engraved but also designed. So that’s why the bank notes resemble dollars and don’t even look like European currency. That also explains some of the uniquely designed characters when looked at in detail. Especially the almost serif type form on the letters C, G, S and Z, but also L and T owe their look to the ”American touch.“ The ingoFont Banknote 1948 comprises all characters of the Latin typeface according to ISO 8859 for all European languages including Turkish and Baltic languages. In order to maintain the character of the original, the ”creation“ of lower case letters was waived. This factor doesn’t contribute to legibility, but this kind of type is not intended for long texts anyway; rather, it unfolds its entire attraction when used as a display font, for example on posters. Banknote 1948 is also very suitable for distortion and other alien techniques, without too much harm being done to the characteristic forms. With Banknote 1948 ingoFonts discloses a font like scripts which were used in advertising of the 1940’s and 50’s and were popular around the world. But even today the use of this kind of font can be expedient, especially considering how Banknote 1948, for its time of origin, impresses with amazingly modern detail.

DIN Serif: Specimen Manual PDF The DIN Type System: A Comparison Table This is the first ever release of a true serif companion for the popular DIN typeface. DIN Serif originated in a custom project for a watchmaking journal which required a modern serif to work in unison and match the inherent simplicity of DIN. As a result, a solid, confident and well-balanced typeface was developed which is simple and neutral enough when set at small sizes, but sturdy and powerful when set at heavier weights and bigger sizes. It utilizes the skeleton of the original DIN and retains its basic proportions such as x-height, caps height and descenders, whereas ascenders were slightly increased. DIN Serif makes no attempt to impress with ephemeral nifty details on individual letters, but instead it concentrates on a few modern, functional and everlasting novelties which express an overall distinct quality on the page and set it apart from most classic romans. This is a low contrast typeface with vertical axis and squarish form which brings out a balance between simplicity and legibility. Its narrow proportions offer economy of space which is critical for newspaper body text and headlines. At small sizes the text has an even texture, it is comfortable and highly readable. The serifs are narrow at heavy weights and when tight typesetting is applied at large sizes, the heavier weights become ideal for headlines. DIN Serif was inspired by late 19th century Egyptian and earlier transitional roman faces. Bracketed serifs were placed on the upper part of the letterforms (this is where we mostly concentrate our attention when we read) whereas small clean square serifs were placed on and under the baseline to simplify the letterforms. In order to reduce visual tension at the joins and make reading smooth and comfortable, a slight hint of bracketed serif was added at the joins in the form of a subtle angular tapered serif, which softens the harsh angularity. These angular tapered serifs tend to disappear at smaller sizes (or smooth out the joins) but stand out at bigger sizes exuding a strong, modern and energetic personality. What started out as a custom 2 weight family, it has developed into a full scale superfamily with 10 styles from Regular to ExtraBlack along with their italics. Additional features were added such as small caps, alternate letters and numbers as well as numerous symbols for branding, signage and publishing. All weights were meticulously hinted for excellent display performance on the web. Finally, DIN Serif supports more that 100 languages such as those based on the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic alphabet.

Attention! Important information! There is no Cyrillic support in TT Ricks! TT Ricks useful links: Specimen | Graphic presentation | Customization options About TT Ricks: We are glad to present you the new font TT Ricks, which continues the line of trendy and yet affordable TypeType Starter Kit fonts. TT Ricks is a flamboyant elzevir-type serif, for which the words “cute” or “calm” are not a fitting definition. TT Ricks can be classified as a display title typeface that works especially well at large and medium sizes in packaging design, book graphics and posters. The typeface is inspired by the pre-digital font “De Vinne”, which was designed in 1892 by the designer Gustav F. Schroeder. We liked certain aspects of the historical prototype, but at the same time, when creating TT Ricks, we did not want to limit ourselves—on the contrary, we were eager to discover a completely new spirit and bring bright details to the font. The TT Ricks typeface stands out for its strong contrast, noticeable sharp serifs, narrow letterforms with a pronounced displacement of flows in the arches. The typeface has very dense spacing, and in the bold style, the text set begins to resemble Gothic by its richness and tension. Important visual features of TT Ricks are the dashing shapes of ascenders and descenders, the thin and sharp stroke endings, and the “elzevier legs” of the letters R K k. In the lowercase round characters c e s, you can notice the pronounced slope of the oval, which contrasts with the general set of the font. These "slanted" signs and ascenders and descenders of the letters f and y are designed to cut the monotony of a set and to entertain the reader's eyes. The TT Ricks typeface consists of three weights (Regular, Medium, Bold) and one variable font. Each style consists of 553 glyphs and contains 18 OpenType features. The most interesting features are stylistic alternates for the letters R K k with alternative short leg shapes, two sets of figures for working with upper and lower case characters, and a set of original icons that further reveal the spirit of the family. Please note! If you need OTF versions of the fonts, just email us at commercial@typetype.org Attention! Important information! There is no Cyrillic support in TT Ricks! TT Ricks OpenType features: aalt, ccmp, locl, numr, ordn, tnum, onum, lnum, pnum, case, liga, calt, ss01, ss02, ss03, ss04, ss05, ss06 TT Ricks language support: Acehnese, Afar, Albanian+, Aleut (lat), Alsatian, Aragonese, Arumanian+, Asu, Aymara, Azerbaijani +, Banjar, Basque +, Belarusian (lat), Bemba, Bena, Betawi, Bislama+, Boholano+, Bosnian (lat), Breton +, Catalan+, Cebuano+, Chamorro+, Chichewa, Chiga, Colognian+, Cornish, Corsican +, Cree, Croatian, Czech+, Danish, Dutch+, Embu, English+, Esperanto, Estonian+, Faroese+, Fijian, Filipino+, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian+, Gaelic, Gagauz (lat), Galician+, Ganda, German+, Gikuyu, Guarani, Gusii, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiri Motu, Hungarian+, Icelandic+, Ilocano, Indonesian+, Innu-aimun, Interlingua, Irish,