ROARRR! THE STYLES -Pantera Pro is the most complete style, and although its default look is mono-rhythmic it gets really playful and crazy like the examples of the posters by just activating the Decorative Ligatures button in the Open-type Panel of Adobe Illustrator. However, I recommend using also the Glyphs Panel because there you'll find much more variants per letter. Pantera Pro is in fact, coded in a way the combination of thicknesses will always look fantastic. -Pantera Black Left, and Pantera Black Right are actually “lite” versions of Pantera Pro: They have very little Open-Type code, so what you see here is what you get. Pantera Black Left has its left strokes thick, while Pantera Black Right has its right strokes thick. -Pantera White is a lovely member in this family that looks lighter and airy, hence its name. With the feature Standard Ligatures activated (liga) the font gets very playful. -Pantera Caps is based on sign painters lettering and since it follows the same pointed brush rules as the other styles, it matches perfectly. -Pantera Claws like its name suggests, is a set of icons that were done by our dear panther. THE STORY It is said that typography can never be as expressive as calligraphy, but sometimes it can get close enough. I tend to think that calligraphic trials, in order to work well as potential fonts, need first to go through very strict filters before going digital: While calligraphy is synonym of freedom (once its rules are mastered), type-design, in the other hand, has its battlefield a little tighter and tougher. When I practice pointed brush lettering, there are so many things happening on the paper. And most of them are delicious. The ones who know my work may see that although many of my fonts are very expressive, my handmade brush trials are much more lively than them. With that in mind, this time I tried to go further and rescue more of those things that are lost in the process of thinking type when first sketches are calligraphic. I wondered if I could create something wild, hence its name Panther, by understanding the randomness that sometimes calligraphy conveys and turning it to something systemic: With Pantera, I created an ordered disorder. Like it happens a lot in many kinds of lettering styles, in order to enrich the written word the scribe mixes the thickness of the strokes and the width of the letters. Like one of my favorite mentors say (1), they make thoughtful gestures Some lively strokes go down with a thick, while some do that with a thin. Some letters are very narrow, meaning some of them will need to be very wide to compensate. Why not?. The calligrapher is always thinking on the following letters, and he/she designs in his head the combination of thicks and thins before he/she executes them. He/she knows the playful rhythm the words will have before writing them. It takes time and skill to master this and achieve graceful results. Going back to the font, in Pantera, this combination of varying thicknesses and widths of letters were Open-Type coded so the user will see satisfactory results by just enabling or disabling some buttons on the glyphs panel. I'm very pleased with the result since it’s not very easy to find fonts which play with the words' rhythm like Pantera does, following of course, a strong calligraphic base. I believe that if you were on the prowl for innovative fonts, this is your chance to go wild and get Pantera! NOTES (1) Phrase by Yves Leterme. In fact, it’s the title of a book by him. EPILOGUE Esta fuente está dedicada a mi panterita

Oktah Round Overview: 1600+ characters per font 16 static fonts 1 variable fonts Extensive OpenType features Support for 220+ Languages (Latin & Cyrillic) Special Symbols, Alternate Sets, and Features Free Trial Fonts Available Oktah Round is a rounded version of Oktah Neue. Oktah Round is soft and friendly, modern and warm. It's a typeface that combines human touch with high functionality. Oktah Round comes equipped with 1600+ characters per font and is available in 16 styles (from Thin to Black), and as a variable font that allows you to change weight and slant angle. Oktah Round supports more than 200 Latin languages and has amazing support for Cyrillic languages like Bulgarian, Serbian, Ukrainian, Macedonian, Russian, and others. Relying heavily on the geometric forms and proportions first introduced in Oktah, this rounded version does more than just smooth out a few corners. To make curves sharper and more uniform, some terminals were modified. Other visual features (like curving tails in 'l' and 't') were dropped to create more clear cut look. Oktah Round is perfectly balanced and finely tuned to be the font you'd want to use again and again. The variety or styles and availability of a variable font give Oktah Round a potential to be used across multiple mediums. Oktah Round supports most Latin based languages, it also has support for Extended Cyrillic. The remainder of the extensive 1600+ glyph character set is reserved for punctuation, numbers, special symbols, and all sorts of additional symbols like squared numbers, geometric shapes, etc. All characters are evenly spaced and carefully kerned, so that there are no overlaps or glaring gaps in any language. OpenType features include Legible Alternates, Case Sensitive Punctuation, Fractions, Sub- and Superscript, Black and White Circled Figures, Ligatures, Oldstyle Figures, Tabular Figures and many others. The variable font incorporates both axes (Weight and Slant) and can be used for web and graphic design alike. 16 static font styles can be purchased separately or as part of Oktah Round family. Two fonts can be downloaded free of charge.

Bardamu is a variable slab serif font family designed by Eugene Tantsurin and Anna Remm, and released by Groteskly Yours Studio. Bardamu is a type family that is open to interpretation and experimentation, yet this ambiguity does little to hide its inherent friendliness and good vides. Bardamu can easily be used in a variety of projects and feel at home both in graphic design, branding, web design or editorial design. Thanks to its unique letterforms and eye-catching design choices, it can be that final touch that makes your brand pop! One of the standout qualities of Bardamu is its remarkable versatility. Bardamu comes in 25 styles, allowing users to choose a style that best fits their needs. In addition to that, it offers a wide range of styles, from sleek backward-slanted italics at -20° to elegant upright styles, as well as regular 20° italics. For static fonts, there are two extra subfamilies available (10° Half Italic and 10° Half Reverse) that can be used for creating more complex hierarchy in any text. With a total of 25 static fonts and 1 Variable font, Bardamu is the perfect workhorse display slab serif with unlimited typesetting capabilities. Each font in the Bardamu family boasts an extensive 700+ character set, encompassing all major Latin-based languages, punctuation marks, symbols, and even supplementary characters. Bardamu takes flexibility to a whole new level with its incredible OpenType features that further enhance its versatility. With features such as Case-Sensitive Punctuation, Stylistic Alternates, Sub- and Superscript, Tabular Figures, and Localised Forms, you can fine-tune every detail of your design to perfection. Moreover, the multiple stylistic sets available in Bardamu allow you to switch between various versions of the same glyph effortlessly. Bardamu type family includes 25 static styles as well as a variable font. All styles can be purchased separately or as a full family package. Two styles can be downloaded free of charge. If you'd like to explore Bardamu further, we also offer free trials upon request.

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.

Noad Sans is an experimental sans serif typeface with a strong character and some very unique visual features. At the core of Noad Sans is a sturdy sans serif with closed apertures and fairly simple letterforms. The defining feature of Noad Sans, however, is its visualised nodes: all control points of Bézier curves in each of the fonts in the family are intentionally visualised. The effect of this feature is largely defined by the usage: in titles and larger bodies of text, the visualised nodes stand out and create a rhythmic pattern of their own. In smaller sizes, the sans serif base of the font becomes more prominent and the nodes create a visual fuzz. Noad Sans comes in 6 styles and as a Variable Font with two axes–Optical Size and Slant. The size of each node can be changed from the smallest (Mini and Mini Italic) to the largest (Extra and Extra Italic). Variable Font technology allows you to fine tune the size of the nodes and the slant angle, so that your version of Noad Sans can be truly unique. Noad Sans has a large character set of 570+ glyphs, covering the vast majority of Latin based languages. In addition to that there are dozens of special characters, punctuation, numbers, and symbols. Noad Sans is equipped with a number of useful OpenType features, such as Case-Sensitive Punctuation, Stylistic Alternates, Ligatures, Fractions and many more. Noad Sans began as an experimental project, and during its development the spirit of experimentation was at the heart of the project. Thanks to the unique nature of the typeface, it can feel at home in a variety of settings: from web development, graphic and product design to more novel uses like 3D and NFTs. Noad Sans type family includes 6 static fonts (Mini, Mini Italic, Regular, Regular Italic, Extra and Extra Italic) and one variable font. Each style can be purchased separately. There is a free trial version of Noad Sans that can be downloaded free of charge on MyFonts. For more information on the typeface, feel free to download Noad Sans PDF Specimen.

Now even more design possibilities with the popular DIN Next. With its technical and neutral character, DIN Next has earned a permanent place in contemporary typography. Now, DIN Next Slab expands the font family further, offering new design potential. Now comes the next step, DIN Next Slab, also produced under the direction of Akira Kobayashi. On a team with Sandra Winter and Tom Grace, Kobayashi is creating the new font variant based on the optimized shapes of DIN Next. The expansion will make the popular font all the more flexible and versatile. Apart from that, the geometric slab serifs underline the technical and formal nature of the font and emphasize a central design element of DIN Next. However, the team did have some challenges to overcome. While it is relatively easy to imagine DIN Next Light with slab serifs, the amount of available space quickly disappears when it comes to the Black styles. Winter explains that many tests and trials were necessary to find a compromise between space, letters and the serif shapes. Experiments with modified contrast in the weight or only one-sided serifs were quickly abandoned. The central, technical and powerful character of the font changed too much. Nevertheless, it was necessary to simplify slightly the shape of some letters, such as the ‘k’ or ‘x’, for example. These changes, first developed in the Black styles, were applied to all weights in order to lend the font a consistent appearance. Like DIN Next, DIN Next Slab also has seven weights, which cover the range from Ultralight to Black, each with matching italic. There are various character sets in all of the styles and the four middle weights have small capitals available. DIN Next Slab harmonizes perfectly with the styles of DIN Next: the basic letterforms and weights are identical. Both versions of the font can work together perfectly, not just in headlines and body text, but also within a text; they complement each other very well as design variations. With the new DIN Next Slab, Monotype expands the DIN Next super family consistently. With DIN Next Slab, you can underscore the technical and formal nature of the understated font not only in headlines, but in texts, as well. In this way, you have new and diverse potential for application, thanks to the way the different styles of DIN Next combine perfectly.

Impressed by the quality of the Aachen typeface that was originally designed for Letraset in 1969 and extended to include Aachen Medium in 1977, Jim Wasco of Monotype Imaging has extended this robust display design to create an entire family. Derived from the serif-accented Egyptienne fonts dating to the early 20th century, Aachen has serifs that are very solid but considerably shorter than those of its precursor. The incorporated geometrical elements, such as right angles and straight lines, provide the slender letters of Aachen with a slightly technological, stencil-like quality. Despite this, the effect of Aachen is by no means static; its dynamism means that this typeface, originally designed for use in headlines, has come to be used with particular frequency in sport- and fitness-related contexts. Jim Wasco, for many years a type designer at Monotype Imaging, recognized the potential of Aachen and decided to extend the typeface to create an entire typeface family. He appropriated the existing Aachen Bold in unchanged form and first created the less heavy cuts, Thin and Regular. Wasco admits that he found designing the forms for Thin a particular challenge. It took him several attempts before he was able to achieve consistency within the glyphs for Thin and, at the same time, retain sufficient affinity with the original Aachen Bold. But he finally managed to adapt the short serifs and the condensed and slightly geometrical quality of the letters to the needs of Thin. The weights Light, Book, Medium and Semibold were generated by means of interpolation. Supplemented by Extralight and Extrabold, the new Neue Aachen can now boast a total of nine different weights. Wasco initially relied on his predilection for genuine cursives in his designs for the Italic cuts. But it became apparent with these first trial runs that the soft curves of cursives did not suit Aachen and led to the loss of too much of its original character. Wasco thus decided to compromise by using both inclined and cursive letters. Neue Aachen Italic is somewhat narrower than its upright counterparts; the lower case 'a' has a closed form while the 'f' has been given a descender, but the letters have otherwise not been given additional adornments. The range of glyphs available for Neue Aachen has been significantly extended, so that the typeface can now be used to set texts not only in Western but also Central European languages. Wasco has also added a double-counter lowercase 'g' while relying on the availability of alternative letters in the format sets for the enhancement of the legibility of Neue Aachen when used to set texts. The seven new weights and completely new Italic variants have enormously increased the potential applications of Aachen and the range of creative options for the designer. While the Bold weights have proved their worth as display fonts, the new Book and Regular cuts are ideal for setting text. And the subtlety of Ultra Light will provide your projects with a quite unique flair. The new possibilities and opportunities in terms of design and applications that Neue Aachen offers you are not restricted to print production; you can also create internet pages thanks to its availability as a web font.