Hydrargyrum is the Latin form of a Greek word meaning "liquid silver" - mercury. The Hydrargyrum typefaces are designed with characteristics both of a metal and a liquid. The basic shapes of the letters are generally rigid and rectangular (particularly in style C), but the forms are enhanced by fluid curves and gently rounded corners. Hydrargyrum is not recommended for use at small sizes or in lengthy passages of text. It performs best in display-sized settings. Hydrargyrum consists of three styles, each in medium and semibold weights with matching obliques. The A style features solid, standard letterforms including the two-story a and g. Style B substitutes the a, g, M, and N (and related glyphs including numero and trademark symbols) for alternate shapes. The third subfamily takes the rectangular theme to an extreme, eliminating as many slanted strokes as possible from the letterforms. This makes some C-style letters ambiguous with one another, such as the U's and V's. As such, the C style is best used carefully even at larger sizes. The Hydrargyrum fonts are style linked within each style subfamily with, for example, Hydrargyrum A Medium as the regular style, Hydrargyrum A Medium Oblique as the italic, Hydrargyrum A SemiBold as the bold option, etc.

Syntax was designed by Swiss typographer Hans Eduard Meier, and issued in 1968 by the D. Stempel AG type foundry as their last hot metal type family. Meier used an unusual rationale in the design of this sans serif typeface; it has the shapes of humanist letters or oldstyle types (such as Sabon), but with a modified monoline treatment. The original drawings were done in 1954; first by writing the letters with a brush, then redrawing their essential linear forms, and finally adding balanced amounts of weight to the skeletons to produce optically monoline letterforms. Meier wanted to subtly express the rhythmical dynamism of written letters and at the same time produce a legible sans serif typeface. This theme was supported by using a very slight slope in the roman, tall ascenders, terminals at right angles to stroke direction, caps with classical proportions, and the humanist style a and g. The original foundry metal type was digitized in 1989 to make this family of four romans and one italic. Meier completely reworked Syntax in 2000, completing an expanded and improved font family that is available exclusively from Linotype GmbH as Linotype Syntax. In 2009 the typeface family was renamed into a more logical naming of "Syntax Next" to fit better in the Platinum Collection naming."

Bauhaus is a style of art that was born in Weimar Germany in the early part of the 20th century. The font that bears the bauhaus name was constructed in accordance with this style by making use of spheres and squares with little or no added flourishes. Since this typeface was already minimalistic in appearance, it was difficult to produce a similarly styled font. So I went back to bauhaus’ architectural roots for inspiration. The result contains a more detailed composition, but is still focused on the basic aesthetics that continue to make bauhaus a popular art form. Baudi has a glyph count of 388 and supports the following languages Afrikaans, Albanian, Asu, Basque, Bemba, Bena, Bosnian, Catalan, Chiga, Colognian, Cornish, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Embu, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Galician, German, Gusii, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Kabuverdianu, Kalaallisut, Kalenjin, Kamba, Kikuyu, Kinyarwanda, Latvian, Lithuanian, Low German, Lower Sorbian, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Malay, Maltese, Manx, Meru, Morisyen, North Ndebele, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Nyankole, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Rwa, Samburu, Sango, Sangu, Scottish Gaelic, Sena, Shambala, Shona, Slovak, Slovenian, Soga, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Swiss German, Taita, Teso, Turkmen, Upper Sorbian, Vunjo, Walser, Zulu

The font family Univers is one of the greatest typographic achievements of the second half of the 20th century. The family has the advantage of having a variety of weights and styles, which, even when combined, give an impression of steadiness and homogeneity. The clear, objective forms of Univers make this a legible font suitable for almost any typographic need. In 1954 the French type foundry Deberny & Peignot wanted to add a linear sans serif type in several weights to the range of the Lumitype fonts. Adrian Frutiger, the foundry’s art director, suggested refraining from adapting an existing alphabet. He wanted to instead make a new font that would, above all, be suitable for the typesetting of longer texts — quite an exciting challenge for a sans-serif font at that time. Starting with his old sketches from his student days at the School for the Applied Arts in Zurich, he created the Univers type family. In 1957, the family was released by Deberny & Peignot, and afterwards, it was produced by Linotype. The Deberny & Peignot type library was acquired in 1972 by Haas, and the Haas’sche Schriftgiesserei (Haas Type Foundry) was folded into the D. Stempel AG/Linotype collection in 1985/1989.

When reading text, the most informative parts of the written word for a human brain to identify, are the top and bottom edges of each word, and to a lesser degree, the leading and trailing edges. The overall shape has more useful info than the inner workings of each word. DT Enigmystic, is a display font family that gives you just that. The outer edge. At first glance, these letters don't look like standard letters, and yet, they are perfectly readable. And it is a 'somewhat' smart text, in that it will automatically complete the trailing edge of every word, whenever it sees a comma, period or space. Similarly, it will automatically complete the leading edge of every word following a space. When used as display test or as a heading, the first letter will need to be preceeded by a space, to achieve a full enclosed word outline. As with most of my fonts, do use Contextual Ligatures. This allows the letters to come alive. When generated here on this webpage, contextual ligatures are not turned on, and so the words do not appear completely closed at their beginnings and ends. But as can be seen in the poster images, these outlined words do automatically complete themselves when contextual ligatures are active.

OBO Classic is the second installment of the OBO series, a type collection based on a square. Every character is mapped on a 1x1 ratio which allows for horizontal and vertical settings alike. Or mixed, like crosswords. OBO Classic is a display interpretation of a traditional Old-style Serif. The “distortion” which maps each character to a square creates unusual proportions to what we are used to from classic serif typefaces. The result is a monospaced font. While each individual letter feels conventional on its own, when brought together in words the result feels contemporary. Thanks to the square base vertical and horizontal – and mixed – settings are possible and easy to apply. There are a few exceptions for certain punctuation and special characters that are half the width for better spacing; and the word space’s width can easily be adjusted through OpenType stylistic sets. Talking about spacing, for strictly horizontal typesetting there is the option to turn on kerning for a number of characters to create a cleaner texture across words and phrases. OBO Classic is best set in large sizes and is most comfortable in editorial and display settings. A series of icons complete the character set. A selection comes as pixel graphics which adds further contrast to the traditional legacy of the typeface.

Dream Within a Dream was the title of exhibition of Czech art inspired by the work of Edgar Allan Poe curated by Otto M Urban and Veronika Hulíková. Three dozens of artists exhibited their works in the Czech National Gallery in 2020. The cataloguje was printed with the use of the present typeface. Artists took significant interest in Poe's literary oeuvre only after the writer's untimely death. This was mainly thanks to the poet Charles Baudelaire who translated Poe's works to French. As early as in the second half of the 19th century, prominent artists such as Edouard Manet, Odilon Redon, James Ensor and Gustave Doré created remarkable artworks inspired by Poe. Although the first Czech translations of Poe's woks date to the 1850s, artworks inspired by them only appeared several decades later, at the turn on the 20th century. Poe's poems and short stories inspired František Kupka and soon after him, Josef Váchal, Jan Konůpek and František Kobliha. Alfred Kubin, a German artist born in Bohemia, made illustrations for the German translation of Poe's collected stories. Later on, Alén Diviš and František Tichý created further Poe-inspired artworks. Poe was a source of inspiration for Jan Švankmajer and more recently, František Štorm and Jaroslav Róna.

VetteLetters is proud to bring you the TpKurier-family. It is cooked up by our German chef Martin Lorenz currently living in lovely Barcelona! Chef Lorenz about the TpKurier recipe: “TpKurier is the second redesign we did of Courier. The first redesign in 2000, although based on a five-unit grid, was drawn completely by hand. Six years later we designed another grid version of Courier, and the TpKurier family was born. This version is completely constructed up till its last detail. We didn't want to correct ‘mistakes’ deriving from the use of the grid, but instead make them visible (see “S”). TpKurier is based on a very simple grid, composed a proportion of four units high by two units wide. A series of other links between them make it possible to form a font from this grid. We felt it was important to consistently work within these limitations so that any unexpected asperities would help provide the font with its character. Even though it is a rough constructed typeface it was important to us to design real italic lower case letters and not just a sloped roman (see “a”, “g” or “s”). The first family published contained a serif and sans-serif version of the TpKurier, with italic and bold.”

John Seddon (1644-1700), was a famous english writing master, the leading calligrapher of his time, and master of Sir John Johnson’s Free Writing School in Priest’s Court, Foster Lane. His portrait was drawn by William Faithorne and was engraved by John Sturt as the frontispiece for his copy-books, such as ‘The Ingenious youth’s companion’ of c.1690 and 'The pen-man’s paradise' of c.1695. These were engraved after his work by others. Your extra-rare book - "The Pen-mans Paradise Both pleasent & Profitable OR Examples of all ye usuall hands of this Kingdome. Adorn'd with variety of ffigures an Flourishes done by Command of hand. Each ffigure being one continued & entire Track of the pen most where of may be struck as well Reverse (or to answer bothwayes) as Forward", London (1965). - YES (that is the title of the book) was the starting point to these new extra accurated works of Iza W, a series of revivals of the penmanship Seddon’s artworks, animal and human kingdon inspired penmanship forms in the Bestiario font. On the other hand, his highly ornamented animal kingdon inspired capitals and alphabets in the Seddon Penmans Paradise Capitals typeface. The “SeddonsFleurons” completes the collection. Fantastic choice to elaborated barocque/renaissance inspired and historical accurated layouts.

Jantar Sharp is a text family with flared terminals that eludes the catego­ries of serif or sans. Its most recognisable features are taken from both styles to achieve proper design and high legibility standards. Jantar Sharp performs especially well when used for continuous reading including texts on web platforms. Its personality lies in the flared stroke endings and certain details which make its shapes neither sans nor serifs. Rather than following any particular historical model, it picks up elements from various periods to achieve an organically dynamic look which is entirely compatible with the reading process. Jantar Sharp Italic makes a nice contrast, though the pace and proportions are not drastically different from the upright. This allows for effortless reading of longer passages of italicised text. Jantar Sharp – as well as its teammate Jantar Flow – has been designed in seven weights from ExtraLight to Heavy, all with accompanying italics; it has a tabular and proportional set of figures in both old style and lining options are included together with 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 language and a set of case-sensitive characters.