Born in the 70s Personal influences are unavoidable in type design and usually find their way through into finished fonts. At Fontsmith, one period in particular provides inspiration, according to FS Pimlico designer, Fernando Mello. “Jason and Phil have always known that I’m very into the visual language of the 70s. I know that Jason shares my love of the 70s and Phil will sometimes admit to being a fan, too. I think that’s the reason they were both so supportive in the development of this font. “And, of course, we all share an interest in good-humoured and intelligent design. We like to think it’s a Fontsmith characteristic.” Back from black FS Pimlico started in an unusual place: with a tubby, penguin-like lowercase “a” that Fernando Mello had been sketching. From “a” grew the rest of the alphabet – a bubbly, fat, friendly family with a brush-written quality that became FS Pimlico Black. The black weight certainly isn’t the normal starting point for creating a regular and bold weight, but Fernando pressed on, driven by a glut of influences: brush-writing; Letraset and early digital systems catalogues; the type of Herb Lubalin and Tony di Spigna; 70s clothes and vinyl; and 70s revival disco nights in London’s Pimlico and Vauxhall. Natural or flourished Not often do fonts come along that seem to span the ages. FS Pimlico is at home in an office environment providing a fresh clear identity in communications or providing text that’s clear and easy to read. But it likes to party, too, 70s style. With the OpenType features switched on, a designer can totally change the look of their work, and create point-of-sale, headlines and titles that stand out and get noticed.

I hate the idea of revivals. I have publicly said I choose not to do revivals because they make me uncomfortable. This is as close as I have been to crossing my own line. To be direct, Rhythm is based on the ATF typeface, Ratio (I just recently learned the foundry of origin). I came across this typeface from a printed specimen years ago when I was in school and held onto it. It was unique and I loved how well integrated the inline worked within both the flourish and serif of the glyphs—it was old, but not, reminiscent, but fresh. My specimen was limited in the glyph offering (it was c. 1930ish) and I realized a lot would need to be done to ‘finish’ it and bring it to contemporary expectations. I didn't want to do ‘retro’ and tried to avoid the visual trappings associated with it. What I did want to do is interpret what I had in the specimen and reinterpret it digitally, refining its construction and extending its typographic equity along the way. The ‘One’ and ‘Two’ (and their matching ‘Solids’) styles diverge providing various elaborations that coordinate well between rigid bracketed serifs and compact tails. I further expanded the glyph offering to include a full diacritic set, old style numerals, fractions, stylistic alternates, swashes, titling alternates and controlled flourishes that adhere to the efficient framework of the script. And yes, I refer to it as a ‘script’ because calling it a ‘cutesy serif’ seems wrong :) I hope this is seen less as a slavish revival and more as a championing of a really unique typeface. The Original Typeface was Adastra, designed by Herbert Thannhaeuser for the Foundry D. Stempel AG in Frankfurt, Germany.

Homelessfonts is an initiative by the Arrels foundation to support, raise awareness and bring some dignity to the life of homeless people in Barcelona Spain. Each of the fonts was carefully digitized from the handwriting of different homeless people who agreed to participate in this initiative. A biography/story of each homeless person captures their story, to help raise awareness and bring some dignity to the life of homeless people. Monotype is pleased to donate all revenue from the sales of Homelessfonts to the Arrels foundation in support of their mission to provide the homeless people in Barcelona with a path to independence with accommodations, food, social and health care. Juan Carlos was born in Barcelona, Spain 46 years ago. Since the age of 17 – and during eleven years – he worked double shifts of eight hours every day in a factory. Excessive work and family problems debilitated his health and he lost his job. He then faced a dilemma: to spend unemployment benefits to pay for rent or for food. For a few years, he worked helping in the kitchens of different restaurants while he lived on a pension, until he was definitively left without work and ended up living in the street for 10 years. “In the street I tried to find rest in the ATMs of banks. I preferred to be alone, and if I ran into conflictive people, I looked for somewhere else” he explains. Living in the street he was the victim of an aggression. Since then, with the help of Arrels he moved into a pension. Today, Juan Carlos is a volunteer in the shower service of Arrels, the same showers he used during years. He also collaborates with the maintenance team, helps prepare hygienic and cleaning material, and participates in activities such as the theatre group and the football team.

Write like the inventor of the diesel engine — it’s possible with the Diesel Rudolf Script (patterned after the original handwriting of Rudolf Diesel)... In 2008 the city of Augsburg and the MAN Group celebrated the 150th birthday of Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the diesel engine which was named after him. With the help of a few preserved original letters, it was possible to create a convincing digital version of Rudolf Diesel’s personal handwriting. The engineer and inventor Rudolf Diesel was born in Paris in 1858 and also went to school there. In1870 his family moved to England and Rudolf was sent to relatives in Augsburg where he continued going to school. Later, after completing his studies in Munich, he began working as an engineer in the machine factory Linde. Alone this part of his life makes clear why Rudolf Diesel’s handwriting was so ”jerky,“ hesitant and inconsistent. He learned to write according to the French style, that is, Latin cursive — completely different from the very correct and neat German handwriting taught at that time which he had to learn at 13 years of age. These circumstances explain why his handwriting is ”messy“ (especially for those days) with its mixtures of letter forms within a text, even within individual words. Plus, he obviously did not attach much importance to ”pretty writing.“ Sometimes the characters are wide, then narrow, sometimes large and clear and then again crammed and primitive. The individuality is emphasized with characteristics derived from quill and ink. The diversified images of the font Diesel Rudolf Script make more than 80 ligatures and stylistic alternates possible which can be selected with help from the OpenType functions Ligatures and Discretional Ligatures.