This font is based on an alphabet published by Luca Pacioli in his 1509 mathematical treatise De divina proportione. In this book, Pacioli describes how to build the Roman alphabet geometrically using lines, squares and circles. Pacioli was not the first or the last man in his era to describe the building of letters mathematically. Felice Feliciano did this before Pacioli, and Albrecht Dürer further developed these forms years after. According to Pacioli, the thick strokes should be 1/9th of the height, and the thin strokes should have 1/2 the weight of the thick strokes. I felt that this beautiful alphabet needed to be restored to its full geometric glory and set out to construct an accurate replica using Pacioli's instructions. Included in the font you'll find the letters that have the grid overlay and also the letters without the grid. The letters J, W, U, and Z were not included in the book, so I have created my own versions of these characters that fit into Pacioli's grid. Pacioli shows two different Os in the book, so I have included the second O as well as a second J, Q, and Z as OpenType stylistic alternates. Also included in the font are border patterns and a fleuron taken from the cover of the book.

Minigap is a geometric sans serif family that has a minimal height difference between upper and lower case. In other words for those who are into typography, it has a very high x-height. The choice was made to finally have a typeface that could appear very neat, reducing ascending and descending parts of the glyphs (b, d, g, j, l, ...) that could interfere with the lines above and below. All of that without going to extremes in a unicase style but also without renouncing to a great legibility. This aesthetic, in fact, translates into a pleasant visual effect that creates well-defined lines and enhances the layout, looking excellent also on small screens. The pointed corners of capital letters and numbers have been kept even in the heavier styles, to give consistency to the family. Stylistic alternates are included: “i” and “j” can be set to the x-height, to have a more common aesthetic; by default they are set in the lower version, fitting better the purpose of this typeface. the two-story “a” is also available, to give you one more customizable option and extend the range of use. Minigap is available in 14 styles (7 uprights + matching italics), has OpenType features and supports multiple languages. The Regular weight is offered for free, try it!

Are you looking for a robust, contemporary font with strong personality? Sintesi Semi might be exactly what you are looking for. Sintesi Semi is a hybrid font which manages the “synthesis” between Sans and Serif in its own way. Due to its constant stroke the favorite font of the author is closer to a sans serif and scores with its robustness and contemporary style. Its strong serifs though evoke rather a slab serif font. Sintesi Semi builds together with Sintesi (Serif) and Sintesi Sans an extended family. Prove character too, with Sintesi Semi. Download a free trial version of Sintesi Semi with a reduced character set. Check it out!

Celebrate good times with Zega Grot family! This font is the companion of Zega Text but less “serious” than its predecessor. The Grot version has old vertical proportions, with higher capitals and asc-descenders, height difference between capitals and ascenders, beyond the redesign of various glyphs, giving a less formal tone, more rounded and cheerful. The family consists of 14 styles, 7 weights plus their respective italic versions. The fonts are available in OpenType PS and have extended character set to support CE, Baltic, Turkish as well as Western European languages. You can test Zega downloading the free trial font in Extrabold version (TT only).

Rutherford is clear, robust and authoritative, and reads well at small text sizes while also having the required heft for larger headlines. A wide range of weights makes it a versatile choice for magazines, branding, brochures and advertising. A slightly condensed obround serif with squared stroke terminals. The t, j and f curve around to harmonize with the terminals on the a and g, as does the tail of the Q. The italic incorporates cursive forms on the ends of the lower right and upper left strokes, and uses a single-story a. Includes full European Latin support and alternate designs for the Q and g in all weights.

Max J. Gradl was a German jewelry designer. A Web search today turns up several examples of his work from the turn of the 20th century. He seemed to favor green stones in silver metalwork. Gradl also did advertising work and co-authored a book on architectural design. Most important for our purposes, though, are the incredible hand lettered alphabets and monograms the man left behind. I’ve digitized one of those delightful alphabets and tried to keep it true to the original. Beyond the base character set of letters, numerals and basic punctuation, I had to extrapolate forms that, I hope, hold true to Gradl’s design. Enjoy!

It occurred to me years ago that the graphic arts community might find useful a digital typeface that mimicked the classic look of nineteenth-century handwriting. Conveniently, my mother then still volunteered at the Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, my hometown. She made copies of the letters of a few famous Texans -- Houston, Austin, Travis, Burnet, Rusk. Thomas J. Rusk’s penmanship caught my eye as the most accessible of the bunch. I hadn't realized at the time what a challenge it'd be to render a realistic-looking script face, but the result has, in fact, filled a niche.

Stripes is a caps only font and does not contain additional ligatures, because there is an easy way to create as many of them as you like. To form a ligature, convert your word or word string into vectors. Activate the corner points of the straight lines (not the round ones) of a letter and drag them over the next or the previous letter. This way you can create any ligature of your own. Beware of overkilling, it could decrease the legibility of your text. Besides the normal J, Stripes contains a stylistic alternate which should be used to avoid ugly gaps between critical letter pairs (see pdf document).

English Grotesque is based on the proportions of an early 20th century signwriter’s sans, emphasising the characteristic idiosyncrasies of type of the period. Sharing a similar Roman circle-and-square construction as Gill Sans or Johnston Railway, it has a wide T and W, a narrow S, and a long-tailed R. The Roman alphabet did not include a lower-case, and therefore early sans-serifs tended to base theirs on handwritten or cursive models, resulting in more even character widths. English Grotesque, by contrast, carries the more characterful proportions of the capitals through to the lower case. Available in six weights, with optional alternative versions for the Q, &, £ and J.

Doubleganger is a modern sans serif with contrast. The font is represented by condensed lowercace and extended uppercase. To get an elegant and contemporary design, combine them together. Doubleganger is suitable for retro and modern typographic posters and prints, feminine branding, design of books and fashion magazines. The font includes stylistic alternates for symbols: c, g, j, k, o, q, r, u, &, K, O, Q, R, W, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. There are also ligatures: sc, hg, sh, gh, ge, je, st, sp, sr, se, sa, ja, ph, qu, oo, ss, pp, ST, SS, QU, HA, SA, GA.

Bari Sans is a solid grotesque typeface with tense curves and compact proportions, but also more subtle details like the angled terminals, the double storey g and the distinctive shape of the lowercase a. Designed to look robust and masculine, this family is also quite versatile with its 9 weights, ranging from thin to black, plus matching italics. Each font include over 500 glyphs with several OpenType features and 8 stylistic sets: alternate lowercase a, g, l, and y, alternate uppercase I and J, alternate quotation marks... Tabular figures, localized forms, ligatures and automatic fractions are also present, among others. Check the pdf specimen for more details.

Museum is the Wundes foundry's first font revival. These letter forms are scanned from the engravings of Freeman Delamotte who in 1879 published a spectacular set of ancient and mediaeval ornamental alphabets. The original forms for this font were created in 1490, a few years before Columbus discovered America. There was not much information on the origin of this font, save that it came from a British museum, hence the name. The original character set was missing the letters J,P,V and W so I've constructed these letters in the same style to complete the alphabet. Other than those 4 additions, the engravings are true to their original forms.

Vintage Price Tags JNL comprises three sets of numbers in both ribbon, circle and star patterns which, when combined will produce point-of-sale price elements. The designs were re-drawn from examples found in an old wood type catalog, and are now collected in digital format. Ribbon-style numbers are found on the upper case keys. A through J have the large numbers, K through T are the smaller, underlined numbers. The remaining upper case keys contain the dollar sign, cents sign and the phrases "each", "for", "dozen" and "pair". On the lower case, the circle set of combination numbers are on the following keystrokes: The keys a through j are the left side semi-circle numbers and the "k" key is a blank left side semi-circle. The l through u keys are the right side semicircle numbers and the "v" keystroke is a blank right side semi-circle. The star set is on the standard numbers keys for the left side of the star, with the right side characters on the corresponding shift keystrokes for the number keys. In following the original design examples, a cents sign follows the numbers on the right side of the circle or star sets. The lower case w through z contain a left side star blank, a left side star with $1, a right side star blank and a right side star with small double zeros (to comprise a star shaped price tag for $1.00).

Dynamic by name, and dynamic by nature - this sleek font is perfect for logos and hightech quotes. The original lowercase f had a big overhang - I redesigned it so it fits better with accented letters, but also kept the original shape as a contextual alternate: the font automatically uses the "large" f before any low letters... Also the lowercase j would crash into any preceding letters with a righthand descender - so I also designed an automatic alternate j. Result: no colliding letters! The Slanted version adds a touch of speed. ALL fonts from CheapProFonts have very extensive language support: They contain some unusual diacritic letters (some of which are contained in the Latin Extended-B Unicode block) supporting: Cornish, Filipino (Tagalog), Guarani, Luxembourgian, Malagasy, Romanian, Ulithian and Welsh. They also contain all glyphs in the Latin Extended-A Unicode block (which among others cover the Central European and Baltic areas) supporting: Afrikaans, Belarusian (Lacinka), Bosnian, Catalan, Chichewa, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Esperanto, Greenlandic, Hungarian, Kashubian, Kurdish (Kurmanji), Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Maori, Polish, Saami (Inari), Saami (North), Serbian (latin), Slovak(ian), Slovene, Sorbian (Lower), Sorbian (Upper), Turkish and Turkmen. And they of course contain all the usual "western" glyphs supporting: Albanian, Basque, Breton, Chamorro, Danish, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Frisian, Galican, German, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish (Gaelic), Italian, Northern Sotho, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romance, Sami (Lule), Sami (South), Scots (Gaelic), Spanish, Swedish, Tswana, Walloon and Yapese.

Proudly Introducing ‘Royal Tropic‘ – An expressive, quick dry stroke, signature style brush script font. With multilingual support, ligatures, and an extra slanted style. Royal Tropic is great for when you want to grab attention, especially within print design; Packaging, branding, posters, book cover design, etc. The goal was to create a fast-flowing, legible script font with enough personality to take center stage and shine, and I think the end result has delivered exactly that! TIP: Through trial and error, I feel Royal Tropic works best with clean serif/sans-serif fonts. Any other 'handwritten' fonts can disturb the rough/clean contrast, taking with it some of the impact of your design.

Light the fire and get your spells ready for Halloween with this witchy font, Arkhania. This display family offers three different styles from which you can pick the one that best describes the atmosphere and mood of your composition: Striped, fun and wicked, Regular, a more strong and classical look, and Hollow, old styled and classy. All three typefaces inspired by the Triple Moon Goddess and its phases: Maiden, Mother, & Crone. Arkhania family features: 423 glyphs 3 styles 84 icons, drawings, swashes and flags Standard ligatures Alternate characters Contextual alternates Swashes more... In addition, there is Arkhania Sigils, a style filled with swashes, icons, drawings and symbols. Play with them, combine a few, choose from different beginnings and endings and create your own swashes, underlines and frames. You can also find flags and boxes along with common connectors. Tips for a clean and modern look: Combine this typeface with a sans serif, light or thin font, like Aeonian (Aeonian Light was used for these images), and let Arkhania cast a spell on the viewer.

Aeolus Pro is a second attempt at writing a monoline style. Completed after many design transformations. And here (as in KhamaiPro) attempted to provide a different visual design with style as Staccato: (dashed line) Rail: (double line) Tribe: (triple line) and finally a New style Shadow. Also (Bold, BoldItalic) has the advantage of involving between styles… (Rail, RailItalic, Tribe, TribeItalic, Shadow and ShadowItalic) for example: …you have a text frame with some text or one word or one letter with Bold or BoldItalic style with e.g. (color blue), if you duplicate the text frame or duplicate the Layer (as is, without shifting position - text) and you make changes ONLY (the Style* and color of text) in second text frame, would have the effect of filling the gap at the following styles... *(Rail, RailItalic, Tribe, TribeItalic, Shadow and ShadowItalic) you can see the presentation of the photo “Multiplex”. This series of 20 fonts with 624 glyphs each is composed and includes true italics and supports Latin, Greek and Cyrillic.

Nu Sans is a modern and stylish sans-serif font product that was created in 2020. It is a versatile typeface that comes with three different axis options: weight, width, and slant, allowing users to create a wide variety of unique and dynamic typography designs. With a total of 90 complete static fonts, Nu Sans offers an extensive range of options for designers looking for a clean and contemporary font choice. The font family features a bold, geometric design with sharp angles and clean lines, giving it a distinct and modern. Nu Sans is perfect for use in a range of design applications, including advertising, branding, editorial design, and web design. Its dynamic and versatile nature makes it a great choice for any project that requires a strong and bold visual impact. a high-quality font product that offers designers a wide range of options and possibilities. Its modern and stylish design, combined with its triple axis options, makes it a great choice for anyone looking for a versatile and unique sans-serif font.

The techno sound of the 1990s, a personal computer, font creation software, and some inspiration all came together to inspire the F2F (Face2Face) font series. Alessio Leonardi and his friends had the demand to create new unusual typefaces, which would be used in the leading German techno magazine of the day, Frontpage. Even typeset as small as 6-points, in nearly undecipherable layouts, it was a pleasure for the kids to read and try to decrypt the messages. F2F Poison Flowers is a psychedelic trip back in time to the era of peace and love. Who would have ever thought that grunge or techno could be so groovy?

Koya Sans is a contemporary, humanist sans with a friendly yet clear and distinct personality. It is designed for excellent legibility, particularly for long continuous reading. The sharp terminals add liveliness and variety to the carefully crafted letterforms. Koya Sans, a highly versatile type family consisting 12 styles that are designed to work equally well on paper and on screen. The family ranges from Thin to Black variations, with complimenting italics. Inspired by a trip to the Buddhist temple of Kōyasan south of Osaka, Japan, this carefully crafted sans serif typeface with its sharp terminals loosely emulating the sharp corners of the temple’s pagoda roof.

Food Truck package is a wonderful set of fonts. During my recent trip to Japan, I stumbled upon a food truck / street food festival in Nara. Besides drinking the best cup of coffee ever (seriously, it was THAT good!), I got the idea of creating a font package based on the various handwritten signs I saw at the festival. Food Truck package consists of a fat headline font, a couple of outlined fonts, a great chalkboard font, a rather messy script font and a whole bunch of food-related doodles. I am sure you will come up with some great ideas to put these babies to use! Enjoy!

I traveled a lot: in the beginning on my own, later as a tour guide. I always used the English word ‘abroad’ to describe a trip to a foreign country, but I noticed that the English, Australians and New Zealanders preferred the word ‘overseas’. I then realised that they all lived on an island, so most of the foreign countries for them were across the sea. I had to think of that when I made this font! Overseas is a brush font with a certain rough elegance to it. I made it using poster paint and a brush. Use if for posters, product packaging and book covers.

Floridium grew out of an affection for the old wood types of the 1800s. Painters Roman* was the initial inspiration. It was the source for the �banana� and �snake head� serifs. But the design�released by Adobe as Juniper�was too quirky to be useful. I tried to make it more sophisticated and modern while keeping the original personality of the 19th century types. The name resulted from a trip to Miami while the initial drawings were being made. Not the best way to name a typeface, but while we were in Miami Beach there was this tall blonde in a bright yellow bikini sitting on this bright yellow Porsche and...

Straight Line is essentially an outline Modern, but drawn without any curves whatsoever. Thin horizontals and thick verticals provide the classic look of a Didone, updated and enhanced by clean, minimalist geometry. In addition to the Straight Line font itself, the package includes Straight Line Solid with matching spacing and kerning. The Solid font can be used solo, or layered with the outline font to provide a colour background. Straight Line is an excellent display face for contemporary, eye-catching headings and sub-headings, and the fonts contain a full complement of Latin Extended-A characters. The typeface was inspired by a 1930s experimental alphabet by the British artist, Percy J Smith.

This is not an historically accurate font but rather one intended capture the spirit of ancient Roman manual type. It was inspired by various patterns used in documents and books created by Latin scribes between the second and fourth centuries. They used either calamus and ink on papyrus, or a pointed metal stick on wax tablets. We have created the font for contemporary use; distinguishing between U and V, I and J, which had no meaning for ancient Latin scribes, and adding thorn, Oslash, Lslash, W, Y and common accented characters that did not exist at the time. A lot of titlings and contextual alternates complete the set. Available only in TTF and OTF format.

In 1525, Albrecht Dürer, the well known German great artist, was publishing the so-called “Underweysung der Messung mit dem Zirckel und Richtscheyt”, printed in Nuremberg. This handbook explained with numeral figures how to draw with a compass and ruler. A large part is devoted to the drawing of Roman characters, which can be used as decorative initials. We are offering two complete historical initial sets and also have entirely redrawn the missing letters: J, U and W, Eth, Lslash, Thorn and Oslash in the two forms, using the Dürer style. The font may be used with all our Humane and Garalde fonts, like 1543 Humane Jenson or 1592 GLC Garamond and others from the GLC foundry catalog.

Biotic is a dual-personality 18 style typeface which features two distinct design approaches that can be initiated with the flick of a switch. The natural design approach uses conventional forms for a geometric sans but when you switch to the engineered approach some key glyphs become squared to create an edgy approach in an instant. The characters that change are f, i, j, k, l, t and y, along with all punctuation and accents which switch to the square approach. Biotic covers extended latin and basic Cyrillic languages and includes many opentype features such as stylistic sets & alternates, two sets of arrows, circled & old-style numbers, along with case sensitive punctuation and much more.

Sullaty is a classy sans serif typeface that suitable for strong and modern looks on your works. Sulatty has two style and ending swashes for chracter j, g & y. Combine this alternate to make a gorgeous typeface for your design! Two style Font: Regular & Outlined Sulatty is perfect for sport product, branding, logo, invitation, stationery, product packaging, merchandise, monogram, blog design, game titles, cute style design, Book/Cover Title and more. Features : - Ligatures - Ending Swashes - Multilingual Support - Made it into separated file to make it easier to use by beginner & separated file user can use the font with software which doesn't accept open type features. --- Hope you enjoy with our font! Attype Studio

Start new year for new font! present to you, Bon Foyage! Bon Foyage is a Vintage modern serif typeface with unique letterforms, beautiful alternative glyphs, and complete multilingual support. Every letter has a subtle uniqueness to it, from the alternate letterforms of "g, j, y", these glyphs are memorable! This font is perfect for editorial projects, logo design, clothing branding, product packaging, magazine headers, or simply as a stylish text overlay to any background image. Features : Unique letterforms Works on PC & Mac Simple Installations Accessible in the Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, even work on Microsoft Word. PUA Encoded Characters Fully accessible without additional design software. Follow my shop for upcoming updates including additional glyphs and language support.

Novecento Slab Rough adds a letterpress / analog effect to its Slab Serif parent. Each letter has a different pattern and gives you a truly realistic effect. Even accented variants of any base character are all different. This font has also a built-in feature that automatically displays a texture variant for the 2nd occurrence of a letter or a number when they appear close one to each other. For instance: AA OO TT ÜÜ. But also: AOA NON TXT etc. And don't forget alternate glyphs design such as N I J Q Y and all other features present in the Novecento mega family: 32 styles, 76 latin languages supported, 590 glyphs and 16 stylistic opentype features for advanced typography.

The typeface family Triump is a simple sans serif with 6 weights from Thin, ideal for use as an epigraph, to Black for head titles of special impact. Excellent for applying in graphic design as logos, trademarks, posters, editorial and web design. Inspired by the classic types of the late twentieth century with rounded corners that give the typography a smooth appearance with rounded ends, with a horizontal stroke that exceeds the vertical in the letters A, E, F, H, J and K which gives a distinct personality. Triump comes with a Black weight in normal and italic Line both upper and lowercase letters, especially to give a vintage look to the designs.

Designed by Werner Schneider and Helmut Ness, the Vialog® 1450 typeface family has been drawn within the standards of the German DIN 1450 regulations. The typefaces conform to the DIN specifications for proportion and line thickness and also contain characters designed in accordance with its requirements. These include characters that can be easily confused, such as uppercase I and lowercase l, and the uppercase O and figure 0, with the corresponding accentuating graphemes and ligatures. In addition, letter pairs that can readily seem to merge together under less than ideal reading environments have also been redesigned. Characters like the g, J and R have also been redrawn to be more legible. Normal glyphs are available as alternatives.

ED Muskrat is a display font family that looks elegant classic and modern, this font is designed from a combination of serif and semi blackletter fonts that add a unique feel to the font. ED Muskrat has 9 styles: Thin, ExtraLight, Light, Regular, Medium, SemiBold, Bold, ExtraBold, and Black. ED Muskrat is equipped with ligatures, alternative characters, and supports multiple languages. and also this font is perfect for your design needs such as branding, poster design, books, fashion, social media design, logos, etc. Features: Stylistic alternates ( C, E, F, I, J, N, Q, S, Z ) Ligatures ( fi , fj , tt ) 9 Styles ( Thin, ExtraLight, Light, Regular, Medium, SemiBold, Bold, ExtraBold, and Black ) Multi Language Support 373 Glyphs

Based on Element by Max Bittrof, Stamm takes the next step in adaptation to modern environment. Using it's own construction logic it makes the design far more consistent and considerably expands the character set, supporting hundreds of languages, including Vietnamese and extended Cyrillic. Generous amount of OpenType features allows various localization options, automatic fractions, super- and subscripts, oldstyle and tabular figures, small caps and ligatures to suit almost every need. There are 15 Stylistic Sets available to customize the font (some of them duplicate locl-features in case they're not supported by applications): ss01 (Traditional glyphs): changes modern shapes used by default to old-style forms; ss02 (Alternate historical glyphs): changes the shape of several characters to a more obscure historical form; ss03 (Catalan middle dot): replaces middle dot between two l's by Catalan variant for better spacing; ss04 (German ligatures): activates historical ch, ck and tz ligatures used in German blackletter typesetting; ss05 (Dutch IJ-acute): replaces j after i-acute with j-acute; ss06 (Marshallese cedilla): replaces commas under certain letters with cedillas; ss07 (Romanian/Moldovan comma): changes cedilla-glyphs to comma-glyphs; ss08 (Turkish i): replaces regular i with dotted Turkish variant; ss09 (Cyrillic alternates): changes several Cyrillic glyphs to alternate variants; ss10 (Bulgarian Cyrillic): activates Bulgarian shapes; ss11 (Serbo-Macedonian Cyrillic): activates Serbo-Macedonian shapes; ss12 (Double-story a): replaces default glyph with it's double-story variant; ss13 (Alternate asterisk): replaces default asterisk with 5-pointed shape; ss14 (Enclosed figures): replaces standard figures with enclosed variants; ss15 (Slashed zero): replaces default zero with slashed variant.

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.