The dearJoe series of fonts came to life around the year 1999, when I created dearJoe 1, which was a first (and half-assed) attempt to convert my own handwriting into a working font. Being able to type in my own hand had always been a childhood fantasy, and even though I only partly understood the software, a working font was generated and I decided to put it on the internet for people to use in their own personal projects. Which they did: at this moment the dearJoe 1 font has been downloaded millions of times and can be found on Vietnamese riksjas, Tasmanian gyms and chocolate stores on 5th Avenue for instance. The font is not something I am particularly proud of, but it started me of in building what's now the JOEBOB graphics foundry. Inbetween creating other fonts, the dearJoe series has become a theme I revisit every once in a while, trying to create an update on how my handwriting has evolved, along with my abilities in creating fonts that mimic actual handwriting. In the last decade or so I started implementing ligatures and alternate characters, which helped a lot in coming to a result that can almost pass for actual handwriting. The 2019 dearJoe 7 font is the latest addition to this font family. All characters were scanned from handwritten notes, cherrypicking the characters and letter-combinations I liked best. They were written with a Lamy M66 B pen and only minor adjustments were made to the original scans, leaving most little flaws and rough edges as they were for a convincing ball-point on paper result. The font comes with over 150 ligatures, making sure the font has a variated and credible overall look and feel.

Brother To create a truly global font family, FS Albert needed an Arabic script sibling. Emanuela Conidi set about the delicate task of creating an alphabet to harmonise visually with its Latin sans serif counterpart so that the two could be used side-by-side in bilingual publications. Working with the Kufic style of script, with its simpler, geometric forms, Emanuela sculpted letters with the a similar optical size, weight and rhythm as FS Albert, with open counters and monolinear strokes. It never hurts to Naskh But there’s more to FS Albert than a simple, geometric structure. To match Albert’s cheery, charming character, FS Albert Arabic needed an injection of warmth and informality. Emanuela incorporated some of the more expressive, calligraphic shapes of the Naskh script style, which lent the letterforms a looser, softer, more handwritten quality, while remaining functional and structured. The Naskh influence is most noticeable in the bowl of characters such as Jim, Qaf and Nun, in the curved tail of Waw and Reh, and the deep joining of Tah. Follow the script The end result is an Arabic script that’s the perfect partner to FS Albert: open counters, monolinear strokes and a friendly, rounded appearance. FS Albert Arabic is available in Opentype format, in five weights from Thin to ExtraBold. It supports Persian and Urdu, with proportional and tabular numerals for both, plus full vocalisation and the Hijra feature.

STF Eclectic One is a visual cornucopia of symbols, like the junk drawer in your kitchen. Stuff you'll need someday for a graphic element, bullet or dingbat application. Perfect for website icons! The Eclectic family is legendary, with a cult-like following among the inititated. As one of the first dingbat fonts available on the web, it gain popularity after its design in the early 1990s. With over 150 characters in the complete set, you'll find yourself using Eclectic One almost daily to add spice to your otherwise san-serif typographic existence. This font is essentially a soap opera of typographic image elements, created for projects when I couldn't find the "thingbat" I needed. Almost more of a collection of illustrations, there are many characters which connect to form patterns, and of course it's like a "small neutral European country" army knife for the creative community. EcOne features complete hour, quarter, and half-hour notations in an analog clock design glyph, recycled/recyclable symbols, a registration mark, a toaster, globes, sideways diamond arrows, spaceships, stoplights, the "running man," several atomic references, da buzz saw, target icons, the unusual smiley face floating in a ball (with a drop shadow, no less!), and the fish skeleton which complements the fallout shelter symbol, and more. Make your own juxtapositions! One reviewer proclaims "for whatever you do, Eclectic One is an excellent dingbat source." Available in Mac and PC formats. License it today!

BigStripesMono is another typeface family from IngrimayneType that explores the possibilities of alternating letters sets. The family is monospaced with four fonts: a base or solid style, an outlined style, and two styles in which each character is cut diagonally and the halves are separated to form two characters. These split styles are not designed to be used alone but layered with the base style, outlined style, or both to form colorful lettering with an unusual striped appearance. The stripe is not apparent in single letters but only in words or lines of text. For best results use an application that supports the OpenType feature Contextual Alternatives (calt) to alternate the letters of the split styles. The four styles can be combined in several ways to create unusual lettering appropriate for titles, headlines, and similar uses. And if one wants a bold, monospaced, sans-serif face, BigStripesMono has that too.

This is the digitization and considerable expansion of the cheeky and enormously popular film type Eightball, one of the most widely used faces of the 1970s and 1980s. Round and happy like a bouncy ball, these are letters after a sign maker’s own heart. Seen everywhere in its film version, from bingo and pool hall parlor signs to comic books, now this computer version opens the door for the happy roundness to be used on a much larger scale by anyone who designs layouts on a computer. The original film type included a few alternates. We included them, but we added many more as well. So make sure to check out the various OpenType features in your program while using this font. Eightball is great for a variety of applications, including signage, rubber stamps, poster design, titling, cartoons, comics, and pretty much anything where happy and round fit in.

Mariam is a traditional-style Arabic headline face designed by the famous Arabic type designer Ismet Chanbour, who also designed Al Harf Al Jadid - another highly successful typeface from Linotype. Mariam is characterised by certain design features which contribute to its stylistically lively, yet graceful appearance: downward-pointing tails combining with the swinging finial strokes of certain characters, and the various cut-away" effects. This headline face successfully offers a wide range of applications, from very large, bold poster-size work to use at 18 point for emphasis in text work. Available as in the OpenType format, Miriam incorporates the Arabic codepage (CP 1256), and supports Arabic and Persian. It also includes both tabular Arabic and Persian numerals, as well as Latin figures and complete punctuation."

The Ahoura font family, designed by Naghi Naghashian, was developed considering specific research and analysis on Arabic characters and definition of their structure. The Ahoura innovation is a contribution to modernisation of Arabic typography; gives the Arabic font letters real typographic arrangement and provides for more typographic flexibility. This step was necessary after more than two hundred years of relative stagnation in Arabic font design. Ahoura supports Arabic, Persian, and Urdu and includes proportional and tabular numerals for the supported languages. The Ahoura Font family is available in three weights; Light, Regular and Bold. Each has two different styles-- normal and italic. Ahoura is the first real italic Arabic typeface known until now and its intuitive design arrangement fulfils the following needs: - It is precisely crafted for use in electronic media and it fulfils the demands of electronic communication. Ahoura is not based on any pre-digital typefaces and it is not a revival. Rather, its forms were created with today’s ever-changing technology in mind. - Ahoura is suitable for multiple applications, and gives the widest potential for acceptability. - It is extremely legible not only in its small sizes, but also when the type is filtered or skewed, e.g., in Photoshop or Illustrator. Ahoura's simplified forms may be artificially obliqued with In Design or Illustrator, without any degradation of its quality for the effected text. - Ahoura is an eye-catching and classy typographic image that developed for multiple languages and writing conventions. - Ahoura uses the very highest degree of geometric clarity along with the necessary amount of calligraphic references. The Ahoura typeface is of a high vibration that is finely balance between calligraphic tradition and the contemporary sans serif aesthetic commonly seen in Latin typography.

CONCEPT/ CHARACTERISTICS A display font that allows you to »Kleckern und Klotzen« (modified German proverb »to not take half-measures«) The fat and square character to the font, a bold and loud statement. The motto is square, practical, fat. The font styles ranging from high-contrast line difference "beanpole" over mediocrity "slim" to the fattest and blackest "okay" style. A font with humor ^^ APPLICATION AREA The modern, square lightweight »Fat Wear Shirt« would be happy as a display typeface in headline size on the following areas and would find this very real bold: Edi­to­rial Design (Maga­zine or Fan­zine) or Web­de­sign (Head­line Web­font for your web­site), party flyer, movie pos­ter, music pos­ter, clothing, fashion, t-shirts, music covers or web­ban­ner. And and and… TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS Head­line Font | Dis­play Font | Fat Techno Font »Wear Fat Shirt« Open­Type Font (Mac + Win) with 3 styles (okay, slim, beanpole) & 268 gly­phs. Alter­na­tive let­ters and liga­tures (with accents & €) Desk­top Font (.otf) + Web Font (.svg, .eot, .woff) KONZEPT/BESONDERHEITEN Eine Display-Schrift bei der Kleckern und Klotzen erlaubt ist! (Verändertes deutsches Sprichwort »nicht kleckern sondern klotzen«) Der fette und eckige Charakter verleihen der Schrift eine plakative und laute Aussage. Das Motto lautet quadratisch, praktisch, fett. Die Schriftschnitte reichen von kontrastreichen Linienunterschied »beanpole«, über mittelmaß »slim« bis zum fettesten und schwärzesten »okay« Style. Eine Schrift mit Humor ^^ EINSATZGEBIETE Das moderne, quadratische Leichtgewicht »Wear Fat Shirt«, würde sich als Aus­zeich­nungs­schrift in Head­line­größe über fol­gende Ein­satz­ge­biete sehr freuen und fände dies echt fett: Logos/Wortmarken aller Art, Flyer für fast jede Party, Plat­ten ­Co­ver, CD-Cover und Icon Design, Pla­kat­ De­sign, Kleidung, T-Shirts, Comics und Gra­phic­no­vels, Game– und Video­spiel Design aller Gen­res, als Head­line­schrift für print und digi­tale Maga­zine, Bücher und Web­sei­ten u.v.m. TECHNISCHE INFORMATIONEN Head­line Font | Dis­play Font | Fat Techno Font »Wear Fat Shirt« Open­Type Font (Mac + Win) mit 3 Schrift­schnit­ten (okay, slim, beanpole) & 268 Gly­phen. Inkl. dia­kri­ti­sches Zei­chen, alter­na­tive Buch­sta­ben, Liga­tu­ren & €. Desk­top Font (.otf) + Web Font (.svg, .eot, .woff)

Sonrisa is a design that evolved from my sketches of the skeletal structure of Jakob Erbar’s Koloss, trying to discover its underlying essence without all the contrast and bulkiness of the original design. Sonrisa Thin was the resulting font, from which the other weights of the family were developed. Gentle curves, open counters, generous x-height, and sleekly tapered terminals give Sonrisa a very legible, modern, elegant appearance. When she saw the first draft of this typeface, the smile on my friend Jennifer’s face gave me the idea to call it “Sonrisa” (Spanish for “smile”). Jennifer, a clinical psychologist, described Sonrisa’s personality as: "happy, clean, clear, open, joyful, spacious, playful, calm. I can see it being used for body product lines such as oils and lotions. Can see it being used in home/travel magazines or even Architectural Digest. Yoga magazine, definitely." Sonrisa is what some foundries call a “Pro” typeface family with all the bells and whistles that provide typographic versatility: true small caps, oldstyle numerals, arbitrary fractions, discretionary ligatures, and other powerful OpenType features. All fonts in the family, except Sonrisa Titling, support most European languages, including modern Greek and languages that use the Cyrillic Alphabet. (Cyrillic glyphs designed in consultation with Ukrainian type designer, Sergiy S. Tkachenko.) Sonrisa is available in the original Thin, monoline version as well as six weights (Light, Regular, Medium, Bold, Extra Bold, Black), and a Titling font that is essentially a display font construction kit. If you enjoy using Sonrisa even half as much as I enjoyed creating it, then I know you will have a “sonrisa” (smile) on your face!

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.

If there was an American Typeface Hall of Fame, Bank Gothic, designed by the great Morris Fuller Benton would hold a place of special distinction considering this design has survived so many trends in typographic fashion since being introduced in 1930. Its just as desirable today as it was over eighty years ago; arguably more. Today, Bank Gothic is a very popular choice as a titling face for science fiction books, posters and countless television and movie titles. It is also a popular typeface for use in computer games and digital graphics. GroupType’s 2010 revival of this American classic is true to the design, the period, and Benton’s aesthetic. GroupType worked with some of the most talented and experienced type designers that were historically grounded and sensitive to this design project. Fortunately, Mr. Benton has left us a large selection of other great typefaces for insight and guidance. GroupType’s new revival includes the original three weights in regular and condensed style plus two new distressed fonts. All have a new small cap and lowercase in each font necessary for 21st century typography.

When type historians look back on Jim Rimmer, they will consider him the last type designer who just couldn't let go of metal type, even though he was just as proficient in digital type. Lancelot is one definite case in point: A face designed and produced in digital as late in the game as 1999, only to spring onto the new millenium a couple of years later as a metal type cast in three sizes. That was Jim, a time traveler constantly reminding the craft of its origins. This particular time machine was originally designed as a simple set of attractive caps that emphasize the beauty of the variable conventional dialogue between the drawing tool and the intended final form, and the one exchanged within the totality of the forms themselves. Jim designed two weights, with contrast and counterspace being the main difference between them. In 2013, the Lancelot family was remastered and greatly expanded. Lancelot Pro is now a wonder of over 840 glyphs per font, including smaller versions of the caps in the minuscule slots, and alternates and ligatures that can transform the historic spirit of the original design into anything from half-uncial to outright gothic. Language support goes beyond the extended Latin stuff, to cover Cyrillic and Greek as well. 20% of the Lancelot Pro family's revenues will be donated to the Canada Type Scholarship Fund, supporting higher typography education in Canada.

An exquisite Didot font in 18 series Ambroise is a contemporary interpretation of various typefaces belonging to Didot’s late style, conceived circa 1830, including the original forms of g, y, &; and to a lesser extent, k. These unique glyphs are found in Gras Vibert, cut by Michel Vibert. Vibert was the appointed punchcutter of the Didot family during this period. It is the Heavy, whom sources were surest that Jean François Porchez has been used as the basis for the design of the typeface family. In the second half of the 19th century, it was usual to find fat Didots in several widths in the catalogs of French type foundries. These same typefaces continued to be offered until the demise of the big French foundries in the 1960s. Ambroise attempts to reproduce more of what we see printed on paper in the 19th century; a more accurate representation of Didot punches. So, the unbracketed serifs are not truly square straight-line forms but use tiny transitional curves instead. The result on the page appears softer and less straight, particularly in larger sizes. The illustrious Didot family of type founders and printers Every variation of the typeface carries a name in homage to a member of the illustrious Didot family of type founders and printers. The condensed variant is called Ambroise Firmin. The extra-condensed is called Ambroise François. Ambroise Pro brought back to life: fifteen years in the making! Club des directeurs artistiques, 48e palmarès Bukva:raz 2001

Lust’s original masters were completely redrawn, expanded, with a new optical size added based on customer requests. Lust now sports 6 fonts, instead of the original 4: Standard, Display, Fine, and complementing Italics. The character set has been expanded as well to include more OpenType features and more swashes. The Lust Collection is the culmination of 5 years of exploration and development, and I am very excited to share it with everyone. When the original Lust was first conceived in 2010 and released a year and half later, I had planned for a Script and a Sans to accompany it. The Script was released about a year later, but I paused the Sans. The primary reason was the amount of feedback and requests I was receiving for alternate versions, expansions, and ‘hey, have you considered making?’ and so on. I listen to my customers and what they are needing… and besides, I was stalling with the Sans. Like Optima and other earlier high-contrast sans, they are difficult to deliver responsibly without suffering from ill-conceived excess or timidity. The new Lust Collection aggregates all of that past customer feedback and distills it into 6 separate families, each adhering to the original Lust precept of exercises in indulgence and each based in large part on the original 2010 exemplars produced for Lust. I just hate that it took so long to deliver, but better right, than rushed, I imagine.

Alf Becker was a master sign painter and lettering stylist who created well over 100 alphabets for a monthly feature in the trade magazine "Sign of the Times" during the 1930s and 1940s. Thanks to Tod Swormstedt of ST pubications for supplying the source material. One of these designs features a modernized version of Old English or "text" lettering making it more legible for sign and show card work. Doing away with extra curves and swashes, this type style is more calligraphic in nature than classic. Modern English JNL was modeled from Becker's original design, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Developed for screen For not the first time, Fontsmith was commissioned to develop a font for one of the UK’s terrestrial TV channels. The product was a clearly-defined three-weight family. When italics were added, it became FS Matthew, a clean, stylish, structured sans serif with swooping, open curves and a bright, lively personality. Southbank Inspiration for many of the forms of FS Matthew came from details found within the modernist buildings and architecture of London’s Southbank, such as the Royal Festival Hall. During the font’s gestation, Jason had found himself at London Studios, a TV studio on Southbank, and a wander around the neighbouring arts buildings proved thought-provoking. The result was a font with a very British character: solid forms that provide the platform for innovation and distinctiveness. Feelgood efficiency FS Matthew’s trademark is efficiency with a feelgood factor: disciplined enough for corporate identities, websites and signing systems, and colourful enough for logotypes and advertising. Its versatility and excellent legibility are achieved via some unexpected details: the reaching curves of the “g” and “y”; the simple shape of the “u”; an off-kilter “k”; generous counters; and a slightly condensed aspect that makes FS Matthew a space-saver in text or title sizes.

“Kindah” is a Yemeni ancient tribe with evidence of its existence going back to the second century B.C.E. The kings of Kindah exercised an influence over a number of associated tribes more by personal prestige than by coercive settled authority. The Kindites were polytheistic until the 6th century CE, with evidence of rituals dedicated to the gods Athtar and Kahil found in their ancient capital in south-central Arabia. It is not clear whether they converted to Judaism or remained pagan, but there is a strong archaeological evidence that they were among the tribes in Dhu Nuwas' forces during the Jewish king’s attempt to suppress Christianity in Yemen. They converted to Islam in the mid-7th century CE and played a crucial role during the Muslims' conquests of their surroundings. Among the most famous figures from Kindah known as Kindites are Imru' al-Qays (526-565?), al-Ash'ath ibn Qays (599-661), Hujr ibn 'Adi al-Kindi (?-660), al-Miqdad Ibn Aswad al-Kindi (589-653), and Abu Yusuf Yaíqub ibn Ishaq as-Sabbah al-Kindi (805-873) known as the Philosopher of the Arabs. "Kindah" font is a modern Kufic font comes in three weights (i.e., bold, regular, and thin) which is mainly designed to be used as a display Arabic font. The main feature of this typeface is the mixture of curves and rectangular shapes used in the designed Arabic characters. Kindah font was inspired by the design of the Yemeni modern windows of houses in which only top part of the arc is used for building such windows which reflects the originality of the architecture preserved in this part of the world. "Kindah" font is extremely outstanding when used in printed materials with big sizes especially for headline, titles, signs, and names of brands. Hence, it is suitable for books' covers, advertisement light boards, and titles in magazines and newspapers. It has also a Latin character set and it also supports several Arabic character sets which makes it proper for composing alphabetical and numerical words in Arabic, Urdu, and Persian.

Here I am, once again digging up 60-year sign lettering and trying to reconcile it with the typography of my own time. The truth is I've had this particular Alf Becker alphabet in my sights for a few years now. But in the typical way chaos shuffles the days, Buffet Script and Whomp won the battle for my attentions way back when, then Storefront beat the odds by a nose a couple of years ago. Nevertheless, revisiting Alf Becker’s work is always a breath of fresh air for me, not to mention the ego boost I get from confirming that I can still hack my way through the challenges, which is something I think people ask themselves about more often as they get older. You can never tell what may influence your work, or in this case remind you to dig it out of dust drawers and finally mould it into one of your own experiences. On my recent visits to the States and Canada, I noticed that quite a few high-end steak houses try their best to recreate an urban American 1930s atmosphere. This is quite evident in their menus, wall art, lighting, music, and so on. The ambience says your money is well spent here, because your food was originally choice-cut by a butcher who wears a suit, cooked by a chef who may be your neighbour 20 minutes from downtown, and delivered by a waitress who can do the Charleston when the lights dim and who just wouldn't mind laughing with you over drinks at the bar later. So Steak is just that, a face for menus and wall art in those places that see themselves in the kind of jazzy, noirish world where one-liners rule and exclamation points are part of a foreign language. As is usual with my lettering-inspired faces, there is very little left of the original Alf Becker alphabet. Of course, the challenges present in bringing typographic functionality to what is essentially pure hand lettering gives the spirit of the original art a hell of a rollercoaster ride. But I think that spirit survived the adventure, and may in fact be even somewhat magnified here. This font is over 850 glyphs. It’s loaded with ligatures, swashes, ending forms, alternates, ascender and descender variations, and extended Latin language support. Steak comes in 3 versions. According to your taste you can choose Barbecue, Braised or Smoked. It’s up to you!

Like many cities in the Midlands and North of England, Stoke-on-Trent has a rich history linked to making and industry. In Stoke’s case it was pottery. In the early 1900s bottle kilns could be seen covering the landscape of the six towns making up Stoke-on-Trent with hundreds of factories producing some of the best ceramics in the world. But by the 1990s most of these had gone. Torn down for development of housing or just left to rot. During the next few decades Stoke continued to change. The industry was in a decline and Stoke itself was seen as another poor midlands city with a dwindling industry. Then in 2008, Spode, one of the largest and most famousceramics factories in Stoke entered into administration. Pens cast aside, drawings left half finished, designs left in the turned-off kilns; Spode factory was abandoned. This was a real shock and the way everything was getting thrown into skips to be put on the tip was heartbreaking. Thankfully people salvaged some of the technical drawings, sketch design, old sample pieces and ceramics that people hard worked so hard on. Potbank has been in development over a number of years taking inspiration from the heritage and designs from the ceramics industry. It has a mixed Clarendon and Antiqua style structure with its main purpose to be used as a printed type.

The engraver Jean Jannon ranks among the significant representatives of French typography of the first half of the 17th century. From 1610 he worked in the printing office of the Calvinist Academy in Sedan, where he was awarded the title "Imprimeur de son Excellence et de l'Academie Sédanoise". He began working on his own alphabet in 1615, so that he would not have to order type for his printing office from Paris, Holland and Germany, which at that time was rather difficult. The other reason was that not only the existing type faces, but also the respective punches were rapidly wearing out. Their restoration was extremely painstaking, not to mention the fact that the result would have been just a poor shadow of the original elegance. Thus a new type face came into existence, standing on a traditional basis, but with a life-giving sparkle from its creator. In 1621 Jannon published a Roman type face and italics, derived from the shapes of Garamond's type faces. As late as the start of the 20th century Jannon's type face was mistakenly called Garamond, because it looked like that type face at first sight. Jannon's Early Baroque Roman type face, however, differs from Garamond in contrast and in having grander forms. Jannon's italics rank among the most successful italics of all time – they are brilliantly cut and elegant.

Padraig Nua is a font conceptualized and designed by Tony Fahy. It is a European Celtic font, contemporary to many languages, not just of Europe but of the world. It’s origin is influenced by events in Ireland in the 1960s when it was decided that the uncial letterform should not be used further in Irish schools for the Irish language—Gaelic—and that it should be replaced by the Roman letterform—the Cló Romhanach as it was called afterwards. This happened overnight without any apparent discussion. It probably had a lot to do with Ireland joining the EEC, as the EU was called then. It had a massive effect on the Irish language and culture, in that the distinguishing factor that gave the language it’s identity—the half uncial/uncial fonts that were in use in all school, government and society documentation and merchandise—were lost overnight. No one said how or why. It was just done. To this day, all documentation is bi-lingual in government and Gaelic is taught in schools and universities—and decreed so by the European Union—but the presentation for both languages is the Roman letterform. Throughout the world, there are millions of Irish Americans and Irish Canadians, Irish Europeans, Australian Irish, African Irish and many living in the Middle East and Asia—and this new font—Padraig Nua, will appeal to many of them, visually recalling their roots. No one had thought, in those days, of commissioning a design that might update the Gaelic language to a more contemporary appearance that would keep the cultural nature of it intact with a revised and updated font—at one with Europe, the US and the world. Tony Fahy designed Padraig Nua (New Patrick) to address the problem. It keeps an appearance that lends towards the Gaelic language but steers it in the direction of Roman fonts. Some characters reflect letterforms from the Irish/Gaelic manuscripts and uncial fonts.

I've been learning to read Cyrillic and Greek letters lately, mainly because I've been playing the game GeoGuessr. (If you haven't played it, I highly recommend! It plops you down somewhere in the world in Google Street View, and you have to figure out where you are.) Cyrillic shows up in so many more places than Russia! You can see it in Bulgaria, Mongolia, Serbia, Montenegro, Kyrgyzstan, and more. Because of that, I made sure to include a fun double-uppercase version of those alphabet sets in Sleepy Bear. They're styled the same way as the Latin characters: all uppercase height, with some lowercase-styled letters thrown in at that same height for a fun look for all ages. I've also made two weights of Sleepy Bear: a plump and smooth regular weight, and a lighter weight that's built to stack on top of the regular (though you can use it on its own). Just type out a word in Sleepy Bear, copy it, and then change the copy to Sleepy Bear Light. You'll get a great outline look in seconds! All characters are extensively cleaned up, with smooth curves and rounded ends. Sleepy Bear is great for all print projects, and also cuts out of all materials like a dream. It's a cute and quirky monoline font family that's great for all of your family's designs. Each font contains over 850 glyphs, and includes: - Latin and extended Latin characters to support over 100 languages; - Cyrillic and Greek double-uppercase alphabet sets; - 18 fractions; - Punctuation galore; - 38 double-letter ligatures for variety (including international pairs like KK and II); - And a half-dozen alternates for even more variety!

The designer of ITC Medea , Silvio Napoleone said: “I've always had an interest in early letter shapes, particularly how they influenced modern typographic designs. While I was on vacation in Greece, I had a chance to see, first-hand, examples of early letterforms and typography. They really made an impression on me.” The idea of combining the ancient and the modern to create something new was the primary inspiration behind ITC Medea. ITC Medea is essentially a careful blending of the modern sans serif with the elegant forms of the uncial. At first glance, Medea appears to be constructed of geometric shapes. However, closer inspection reveals many calligraphic subtleties. Stroke terminals are flared slightly in characters like the 'e' and 'c.' The top curve of the 'd' is more pronounced than the bottom, and characters like the 'o' are elliptical rather than round. “I gravitated towards the simplicity and legibility of the uncial and half-uncial,” Napoleone recalls. “I thought it would make a great titling font, and I was surprised at how attractive ITC Medea looked in a body text.”

In 1939 the Stephenson Blake Company bought a very popular script called Undine Ronde and began marketing under the name Amanda Ronde. Although Undine/Amanda was quite popular and can be seen in many advertisements from the 1930s and 1940s, there seems to be no surviving record stating the original foundry or designer. We thought that six and half decades of dust layers over the once-popular typeface were enough, so here and now you have its complete and expanded digital incarnation, Adore. It is quite easy to see why this typeface was popular. A round script with graceful meaty curves is rarely found and can be used in plenty of applications. Wedding paraphernalia, chapter titles, posters, poetry, book covers, religious literature... you name it, Adore can fit it. Aside from its totality being unmatched by currently available designs, Adore also possesses some of the most unique and imaginative letter shapes. The narrow loops on the B, P and R, the minuscule-like Z, the looped b and d, the descending h... all these shapes contribute to a breathtaking and adorable calligraphic work unlike any other. The original design came in a basic alphabet, but we have updated it for current digital technologies, and expanded it to include plenty of alternates and ligatures, as well as some ornaments. The Postscript Type 1 and True Type versions come in two fonts, the second containing the alternates and extras, while the Open Type version is a single font containing all the alternates and extras in conveniently programmed features, easily accessible at the push of a button in OpenType-supporting software. We also encourage you to take a look at Typodermic's Mecheria font, which is further experimentation with the same letter forms, resulting in a quirky, friendly, curly, angular gothic-like creature.

The engraver’s sans serif—strikingly similar to drafting alphabets of the early 1900s—has been one of the most widely used stationer’s lettering styles since about 1900. Its open, simple forms offer legibility at very small sizes. While there are digital fonts based on this style (such as Burin Sans™ and Sackers Gothic™, among others), few offer the range of styles and weights possible, with the versatility designers perhaps expect from digital type families. Sweet Sans fills that void. The family is based on antique engraver’s lettering templates called “masterplates.” Professional stationers use a pantograph to manually transfer letters from these masterplates to a piece of copper or steel that is then etched to serve as a plate or die. This demanding technique is rare today given that most engravers now use a photographic process to make plates, where just about any font will do. But the lettering styles engravers popularized during the first half of the twentieth century—especially the engraver’s sans—are still quite familiar and appealing. Referencing various masterplates—which typically offer the alphabet, figures, an ampersand, and little else—Mark van Bronkhorst has drawn a comprehensive toolkit of nine weights, each offering upper- and lowercase forms, small caps, true italics, arbitrary fractions, and various figure sets designed to harmonize with text, small caps, and all-caps. The fonts are available as basic, Standard character sets, and as Pro character sets offering a variety of typographic features and full support for Western and Central European languages. Though rich in history, Sweet Sans is made for contemporary use. It is a handsome and functional tribute to the spirit of unsung craftsmanship. Burin Sans and Sackers Gothic are trademarks of Monotype Imaging.

The Engraver’s Square Gothic—like its rounder cousin, the engraver’s sans serif, Sweet® Sans,has been one of the more widely used stationer’s lettering styles since about 1900. Its minimal forms, made without curves, were popularized long ago by bankers and others seeking a serious, established feel to their stationery. One might argue that the design is a possible precursor to Morris Fuller Benton’s Bank Gothic® typeface. Sweet® Square is based on antique engraver’s lettering templates called “masterplates.” Professional stationers use a pantograph to manually transfer letters from these masterplates to a piece of copper or steel that is then etched to serve as a plate or die. This demanding technique is rare today given that most engravers now use a photographic process to make plates, where just about any font will do. But the lettering styles engravers popularized during the first half of the twentieth century remain both familiar and appealing. Referencing various masterplates, Mark van Bronkhorst has drawn Sweet Square in nine weights. The sources offered just uppercase, small caps, and figures, yet similar, condensed examples had a lowercase, making it possible to interpret a full character set for Sweet Square. Italics were also added to give the family greater versatility. The fonts are available as basic, “/fonts/sweet/square/” character sets, and as “Pro” character sets offering special characters, a variety of typographic features, and full support for Western and Central European languages. Sweet Square gives new life to an uncommon class of typeface: an early twentieth-century commercial invention that brings a singular verve to modern design. Its unique style is as useful as it is novel. Bank Gothic is a registered trademark of Grosse Pointe Group LLC.

The engraver’s sans serif—strikingly similar to drafting alphabets of the early 1900s—has been one of the most widely used stationer’s lettering styles since about 1900. Its open, simple forms offer legibility at very small sizes. While there are digital fonts based on this style (such as Burin Sans™ and Sackers Gothic™, among others), few offer the range of styles and weights possible, with the versatility designers perhaps expect from digital type families. Sweet Sans fills that void. The family is based on antique engraver’s lettering templates called “masterplates.” Professional stationers use a pantograph to manually transfer letters from these masterplates to a piece of copper or steel that is then etched to serve as a plate or die. This demanding technique is rare today given that most engravers now use a photographic process to make plates, where just about any font will do. But the lettering styles engravers popularized during the first half of the twentieth century—especially the engraver’s sans—are still quite familiar and appealing. Referencing various masterplates—which typically offer the alphabet, figures, an ampersand, and little else—Mark van Bronkhorst has drawn a comprehensive toolkit of nine weights, each offering upper- and lowercase forms, small caps, true italics, arbitrary fractions, and various figure sets designed to harmonize with text, small caps, and all-caps. The fonts are available as basic, Standard character sets, and as Pro character sets offering a variety of typographic features and full support for Western and Central European languages. Though rich in history, Sweet Sans is made for contemporary use. It is a handsome and functional tribute to the spirit of unsung craftsmanship. Burin Sans and Sackers Gothic are trademarks of Monotype Imaging.

In July 2014, using my light pen, I completed the work in designing the font - Nizar, which was named in honor of the great poet Nizar Qabbani who inspired millions through poetry and prose. The font depends mainly on the characteristics of the traditional Ruq'ah handwriting, but the spirit of the letters tend to embrace the distinguished style that we knew of the poet in his hand-written poetry books. Due to the fact that I could not find all the alphabets in the great poet's handwriting, I adopted the method of measurement and prediction for structure of the missing letters, Which resulted in a new style of the Ruq'ah Typeface; a closer look at the font highlights the common characteristics of all the usual Ruq'ah writings, which are the height of the character "Alef" and spaces and formation on the line, the contextual replacement and convergence of when a letter meets another, closed and open letters, letters coming down from the baseline, and the forms of dots. That been said, hidden touches in the details of Nizar Typeface can be observed, the characters are all dependent on one pen stroke thickness, and are attracted to the baseline as much as possible when vertically and horizontally formed, and the distance between words and lines grows leading to creating both an aesthetic and typographical touch distinguishing this font from the conventional Ruq'ah – which can be found in some of my previous Ruq'ah projects. It is important to mention that after the completion of the Arabic characters and punctuation, I began drawing the Latin alphabets, punctuation and necessary symbols. I cannot fail to also note that the Arabic characters include the Persian, and the Urdu characters. This Typeface is fit to be used in lengthy texts, especially in literary works, artistic print, and diverse visual display, giving the design striking features, modernity and distinction. Sultan Mohammed Saeed

If there was an American Typeface Hall of Fame, Bank Gothic, designed by the great Morris Fuller Benton would hold a place of special distinction considering this design has survived so many trends in typographic fashion since being introduced in 1930. It's just as desirable today as it was over eighty years ago; arguably more. Today, Bank Gothic is a very popular choice as a titling face for science fiction books, posters and countless television and movie titles. It is also a popular typeface for use in computer games and digital graphics. GroupType’s 2010 revival of this American classic is true to the design, the period, and Benton’s aesthetic. GroupType worked with some of the most talented and experienced type designers that were historically grounded and sensitive to this design project. Fortunately, Mr. Benton has left us a large selection of other great typefaces for insight and guidance. GroupType’s new revival includes the original three weights in regular and condensed style but also a new small cap and lowercase in each font necessary for 21st century typography.

A revival and major expansion of a 1926 Ludwig Wagner Schriftgiesserei typeface called Titanic, Lexington is the ultimate art deco expression of the high times of signage and theater during the first half of the twentieth century. Big feminine caps and cozy direct minuscules make for a unique combination rarely found in other deco faces. Topped off with the humorous and quite suave tall and pointy ascenders and descenders of the alternates, Lexington makes for a versatile and uniquely eye-catching display face beneficial to poster art, book covers, classy menus, product packaging and music paraphernalia. The original specimen Hans van Maanen worked from showed the majuscules, minuscules, figures, and 4 alternates of some ascending minuscules. This new digital version includes all of the above, plus many more additions: - Plenty more alternates, for some caps as well as for all the ascending and descending lowercase. - Three different size variations for the comma and the period. - Oldstyle figures. - A full complement of accented characters to support more Latin-based languages than ever, including Baltic, Celtic, Turkish, and Central/Eastern European languages. - A Handtooled style variation that covers both the main character set and the alternates. Lexington was named after Manhattan's Lexington Avenue, home of the some of the most famous and polished art deco architecture of the 1920s and 1930s. Lexington and Lexington Handtooled come in all popular font formats. The OpenType versions combine their respective alternates with the main character sets, for ease of use within OpenType-savvy applications.

We named this font Scholz Secession. Fin-de-siecle Vienna, Austria is the source of this Jugendstil design from Schriftgiesserei Eduard Scholz. The original release was under the name Reklameschrift Secession. Most of the curve strokes look like commas to me. The letters are as soft and plump as the comforter on the bed I slept on in a Salzburg B&B many years ago. I was traveling with a college buddy and our next stop was Vienna. There a kind, young student named Hanna and her boyfriend took us under their wing. One of the places Hanna proudly showed us was Otto Wagner’s Majolika Haus, built in 1898, and only about 8 blocks from Secession Hall. Hanna explained to us that the style was called Jugendstil and represented Art Nouveau as interpreted within the framework of their culture. I even took a picture. After all, memories are part of who we are. Figures are old-style for text use. This font would not be my first choice for a spread sheet. Included are German ligatures ch (alt-0123) & ck (125), two period ornaments (135, 175) and lower case o and u with Hungarian long umlaut (215, 247)). A very likeable and easy-to-use font.

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 & Piegnot, 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. Adrian Frutiger continues to do design work with Linotype right up to the present day. In 1997, Frutiger and the design staff at Linotype completed a large joint project of completely re-designing and updating the Univers family. The result: Univers Next - available with 59 weights and 4 Linotype Univers Typewriter weights. With its sturdy, clean forms Univers can facilitate an expression of cool elegance and rational competence. Univers has the uncanny ability to combine well with fonts of many different styles and origins: Old style fonts such as: Janson Text, Meridien, Sabon, Wilke. Modern-stressed fonts such as: Linotype Centennial, Walbaum. Slab serif fonts such as Egyptienne F, Serifa. Script and brush fonts such as: Brush Script, Mistral, Ruling Script. Blackletter fonts such as: Duc De Berry, Grace, San Marco. Even fun fonts such as F2F OCRAlexczyk, Linotype Red Babe, Linotype Seven."

A disc jockey-only promotional sleeve for a 1964 [45 rpm] release of “Close to Me” and “Let Them Talk” by Dan Penn featured the song titles printed in a stencil typeface on the record sleeve. Closely resembling a stencil version of Franklin Gothic but with its own unique characteristics, this design has been reinterpreted as Turntable Stencil JNL and is available in both regular and oblique versions. For trivia buffs, Dan Penn is a singer-songwriter-record producer, often collaborating with Dewey Lindon “Spooner” Oldham; both closely associated with the late Rick Hall’s Fame recording studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. In 1964, Hall started the Fame record label, and for a time it was distributed by Vee-Jay Records of Chicago, the first major Black-owned record label in the United States. Penn’s release was only the second for the new label; Fame 6402.

Bound to rules, unbound in the usage. Hyper geometric, and minimal contrast. Circulo V1 is based on a font project I originally started because of a client I had. I wanted to create a display and text font for their product design brand, which is all about reducing the amount of necessary materials and production steps. Before I started the course at tipo-g it was called -“REDUCE“ and was more or less finished. The concept was based on the name. How far can letter shapes be reduced to their core geometric concepts and still be identified as letters? But in a way, it lacked a unique approach and was just a generic geometric Sans Serif with a lack of finesse. There was already a glimpse of characteristics visible which would later define Circulo V1. ‍ The high focus on geometric shapes was not of the same severity, and the angle on the stems was less intense. Those, as I call them, fake serifs turned out to be a significant factor in legibility and the characteristic of the font. Besides those changes and improvements, I decided to implicate a new feature to the concept, a condensed style. I quickly realised that it is impossible to keep my perfect circles and half-circles in this style without breaking my rules for the font. This „problem“ turned out to be the most crucial feature of the condensed set. Circular-based Letters will ignore the rules and boundaries of the condensed style and stay as they are. This feature allows the user to create a unique rhythm in their texts, and if you use the variable font, you can decide how intense this rhythm will be. In this situation, the user can choose which letters are allowed to keep their shapes and which will be put in their condensed corset. All, some or none of them, you decide.

Arapix is a 12 pixel high multilingual Latin-Arabic pixel font with incredible capabilities. The Arapix is an almost traditional Naskh. It is elegant and easy to read even in very small sizes. It includes almost every feature you would expect from a high range Naskh font. Its humanistic look and feel fit perfectly to its Latin counterpart. Arapix was originally designed for a web project that didn't see the light a few years back. It started with the idea of fitting both Latin and Arabic into a 12 pixel vertical grid. The latin glyphs fit properly within the vertical limits, but when it came to the arabic glyphs, it proved to be more challenging. Arabic letters with lower diacritic dots like the (Yeh-fina) or letters with accents above like the (Alef-Hamza-above) need much more space than any Latin letter. Add to this the fact that accents needs to be positioned above and below the glyphs. It is technically impossible to fit a (Yeh-fina-kasratan) or a (Alef-Hamza-above-shadda-damma) into 12 pixels. Initially the accents were dropped and not included in the design. Although it seemed impossible at the start, Sylvain found a solution in the end, including as many contextual alternates and contextual kerning as needed to avoid every collision between letters and diacritics, letters and accents, and diacritics and accents. The contextual kerning was added to achieve an even letter and word spacing in longer text. Arapix is amazingly legible in small size on screen and in print. On the other hand, it also works perfectly as display titling font due to its unique and contemporary pixel approach. It can be used for screens with very low resolution as well as for high resolution screens and prints. The new Arapix comes with various new features and new glyphs including Persian and Urdu letters, stylistic set, old style figures, contextual kerning, contextual alternates and a few icons too. Enjoy the new Arapix and have fun with it.

Since the beginning, Palsam was intended to be a super multilingual family, with a real cursive Arabic companion, and a display cut. The typeface was designed to be used for setting text and titles of contemporary Arabic content, specially magazines, and websites. The Arabic and Latin scripts were designed at the same time, to make a true authentic bilingual typeface. Both scripts have affected each other in several ways through the entire design process, which happened within ten years. Palsam has an inviting, approachable, fashionable and humanist look. Thanks to its low contrast, open apertures, detailed calligraphic strokes, and smooth counters, which also make it easy to read at smaller sizes. The main highlight for Palsam was the Cursive companion. For the first time, the calligraphic Ijaza style was used as a model for designing the Arabic cursive. Since the Ijaza is a hyper combination of Naskh and Thuluth, which makes it perfect to be a companion for the upright Naskh. Moreover this script was used in margins, and to highlight specific content inside a paragraph in older manuscripts. With true cursive companions in five weights, and many opentype features, Palsam grants all the tools needed to set complex information and editorial designs applications. More than 1000 characters are included per weight, including small caps, fractions, old style and lining numbers, ligatures, contextual ligatures, and discretionary ligatures. It supports over 40 languages that use the Latin extended, as well as Arabic, Farsi, and Urdu Languages. The latin script was designed in collaboration with the Slovenian type designer Alja Herlah.

To design a text typeface "at the top with, at the bottom without" serifs was an idea which crossed my mind at the end of the sixties. I started from the fact that what one reads in the Latin alphabet is mainly the upper half of the letters, where good distinguishableness of the individual signs, and therefore, also good legibility, is aided by serifs. The first tests of the design, by which I checked up whether the basic principle could be used also for the then current technology of setting - for double-sign matrices -, were carried out in 1970. During the first half of the seventies I created first the basic design, then also the slanted Roman and the medium types. These drawings were not very successful. My greatest concern during this initial phase was the upper case A. I had to design it in such a way that the basic principle should be adhered to and the new alphabet, at the same time, should not look too complicated. The necessary prerequisite for a design of a new alphabet for double-sign matrices, i.e. to draw each letter of all the three fonts to the same width, did not agree with this typeface. What came to the greatest harm were the two styles used for emphasis: the italics even more than the medium type. That is why I fundamentally remodelled the basic design in 1980. In the course of this work I tried to forget about the previous technological limitations and to respect only the requirements then placed on typefaces intended for photosetting. As a matter of fact, this was not very difficult; this typeface was from the very beginning conceived in such a way as to have a large x-height of lower-case letters and upper serifs that could be joined without any problems in condensed setting. I gave much more thought to the proportional relations of the individual letters, the continuity of their outer and inner silhouettes, than to the requirements of their production. The greatest number of problems arose in the colour balancing of the individual signs, as it was necessary to achieve that the upper half of each letter should have a visual counterbalance in its lower, simpler half. Specifically, this meant to find the correct shape and degree of thickening of the lower parts of the letters. These had to counterbalance the upper parts of the letters emphasized by serifs, yet they should not look too romantic or decorative, for otherwise the typeface might lose its sober character. Also the shape, length and thickness of the upper serifs had to be resolved differently than in the previous design. In the seventies and at the beginning of the eighties a typeface conceived in this way, let alone one intended for setting of common texts in magazines and books, was to all intents and purposes an experiment with an uncertain end. At this time, before typographic postmodernism, it was not the custom to abandon in such typefaces the clear-cut formal categories, let alone to attempt to combine the serif and sans serif principles in a single design. I had already designed the basic, starting, alphabets of lower case and upper case letters with the intention to derive further styles from them, differing in colour and proportions. These fonts were not to serve merely for emphasis in the context of the basic design, but were to function, especially the bold versions, also as independent display alphabets. At this stage of my work it was, for a change, the upper case L that presented the greatest problem. Its lower left part had to counterbalance the symmetrical two-sided serif in the upper half of the letter. The ITC Company submitted this design to text tests, which, in their view, were successful. The director of this company Aaron Burns then invited me to add further styles, in order to create an entire, extensive typeface family. At that time, without the possibility to use a computer and given my other considerable workload, this was a task I could not manage. I tried to come back to this, by then already very large project, several times, but every time some other, at the moment very urgent, work diverted me from it. At the beginning of the nineties several alphabets appeared which were based on the same principle. It seemed to me that to continue working on my semi-finished designs was pointless. They were, therefore, abandoned until the spring of 2005, when František Štorm digitalized the basic design. František gave the typeface the working title Areplos and this name stuck. Then he made me add small capitals and the entire bold type, inducing me at the same time to consider what to do with the italics in order that they might be at least a little italic in character, and not merely slanted Roman alphabets, as was my original intention. In the course of the subsequent summer holidays, when the weather was bad, we met in his little cottage in South Bohemia, between two ponds, and resuscitated this more than twenty-five-years-old typeface. It was like this: We were drinking good tea, František worked on the computer, added accents and some remaining signs, inclined and interpolated, while I was looking over his shoulder. There is hardly any typeface that originated in a more harmonious setting. Solpera, summer 2005 I first encountered this typeface at the exhibition of Contemporary Czech Type Design in 1982. It was there, in the Portheim Summer Palace in Prague, that I, at the age of sixteen, decided to become a typographer. Having no knowledge about the technologies, the rules of construction of an alphabet or about cultural connections, I perceived Jan Solpera's typeface as the acme of excellence. Now, many years after, replete with experience of revitalization of typefaces of both living and deceased Czech type designers, I am able to compare their differing approaches. Jan Solpera put up a fight against the digital technology and exerted creative pressure to counteract my rather loose approach. Jan prepared dozens of fresh pencil drawings on thin sketching paper in which he elaborated in detail all the style-creating elements of the alphabet. I can say with full responsibility that I have never worked on anything as meticulous as the design of the Areplos typeface. I did not invent this name; it is the name of Jan Solpera's miniature publishing house, in which he issued for example an enchanting series of memoirs of a certain shopkeeper of Jindrichuv Hradec. The idea that the publishing house and the typeface might have the same name crossed my mind instinctively as a symbol of the original designation of Areplos - to serve for text setting. What you can see here originated in Trebon and in a cottage outside the village of Domanín - I even wanted to rename my firm to The Trebon Type Foundry. When mists enfold the pond and gloom pervades one's soul, the so-called typographic weather sets in - the time to sit, peer at the monitor and click the mouse, as also our students who were present would attest. Areplos is reminiscent of the essential inspirational period of a whole generation of Czech type designers - of the seventies and eighties, which were, however, at the same time the incubation period of my generation. I believe that this typeface will be received favourably, for it represents the better aspect of the eighties. Today, at the time when the infection by ITC typefaces has not been quite cured yet, it does absolutely no harm to remind ourselves of the high quality and timeless typefaces designed then in this country.In technical terms, this family consists of two times four OpenType designs, with five types of figures, ligatures and small capitals as well as an extensive assortment of both eastern and western diacritics. I can see as a basic text typeface of smaller periodicals and informative job-prints, a typeface usable for posters and programmes of various events, but also for corporate identity. Štorm, summer 2005

The Engraver’s Square Gothic—like its rounder cousin, the engraver’s sans serif, Sweet® Sans,has been one of the more widely used stationer’s lettering styles since about 1900. Its minimal forms, made without curves, were popularized long ago by bankers and others seeking a serious, established feel to their stationery. One might argue that the design is a possible precursor to Morris Fuller Benton’s Bank Gothic® typeface. Sweet® Square is based on antique engraver’s lettering templates called “masterplates.” Professional stationers use a pantograph to manually transfer letters from these masterplates to a piece of copper or steel that is then etched to serve as a plate or die. This demanding technique is rare today given that most engravers now use a photographic process to make plates, where just about any font will do. But the lettering styles engravers popularized during the first half of the twentieth century remain both familiar and appealing. Referencing various masterplates, Mark van Bronkhorst has drawn Sweet Square in nine weights. The sources offered just uppercase, small caps, and figures, yet similar, condensed examples had a lowercase, making it possible to interpret a full character set for Sweet Square. Italics were also added to give the family greater versatility. The fonts are available as basic, “Standard” character sets, and as “Pro” character sets offering special characters, a variety of typographic features, and full support for Western and Central European languages. Sweet Square gives new life to an uncommon class of typeface: an early twentieth-century commercial invention that brings a singular verve to modern design. Its unique style is as useful as it is novel. Bank Gothic is a registered trademark of Grosse Pointe Group LLC.

Lust Didone’s character set was expanded as well during the redraw and update, the Italics were separated and reimagined anew from the universal italics in the original offering. Lust Didone also includes the new Fine optical size with complementing Italics for each size as well. And, yes, more swashes. The Lust Collection is the culmination of 5 years of exploration and development, and I am very excited to share it with everyone. When the original Lust was first conceived in 2010 and released a year and half later, I had planned for a Script and a Sans to accompany it. The Script was released about a year later, but I paused the Sans. The primary reason was the amount of feedback and requests I was receiving for alternate versions, expansions, and ‘hey, have you considered making?’ and so on. I listen to my customers and what they are needing… and besides, I was stalling with the Sans. Like Optima and other earlier high-contrast sans, they are difficult to deliver responsibly without suffering from ill-conceived excess or timidity. The new Lust Collection aggregates all of that past customer feedback and distills it into 6 separate families, each adhering to the original Lust precept of exercises in indulgence and each based in large part on the original 2010 exemplars produced for Lust. I just hate that it took so long to deliver, but better right, than rushed, I imagine.