A typeface with lightly-worn futurism, Sagittarius is equally at home among the beauty and wellness aisles, or the coils of the warp core. The Sagittarius typeface was designed by Jonathan Hoefler in 2021. A decorative adaptation of Hoefler’s Peristyle typeface (2017), Sagittarius’s rounded corners and streamlined shapes recall the digital aesthetic of the first alphabets designed for machine reading, a style that survives as a cheeky Space Age invocation of futurism. Sagittarius was created for The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, where it first appeared in 2021. From the desk of the designer: Typeface designers spend a lot of time chasing down strange valences. We try to figure out what’s producing that whiff of Art Deco, or that vaguely militaristic air, or what’s making a once solemn typeface suddenly feel tongue-in-cheek. If we can identify the source of these qualities, we can cultivate them, and change the direction of the design; more often, we just extinguish them without mercy. Sometimes, we get the chance to follow a third path, which is how we arrived at Sagittarius. During the development of Peristyle, our family of compact, high-contrast sans serifs, I often found myself unwittingly humming space-age pop songs. Nothing about Peristyle’s chic and elegant letterforms suggested the deadpan romp of “The Planet Plan” by United Future Organization, let alone “Music To Watch Space Girls By” from the ill-advised (but delicious) Leonard Nimoy Presents Mr. Spock’s Music from Outer Space, but there they were. Something in the fonts was provoking an afterimage of the otherworldly, as if the typeface was sliding in and out of a parallel universe of high-tech spycraft and low-tech brawls with rubber-masked aliens. It might have had something to do with a new eyeglass prescription. But I liked the effect, and started thinking about creating an alternate, space-age version of the typeface, one with a little more funk, and a lot more fun. I wondered if softer edges, a measured dose of seventies retrofuturism, and some proper draftsmanship might produce a typeface not only suitable for sci-fi potboilers, but for more serious projects, too: why not a line of skin care products, a fitness system, a high-end digital camera, or a music festival? I put a pin in the idea, wondering if there’d ever be a project that called for equal parts sobriety and fantasy. And almost immediately, exactly such a project appeared. The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Jesse Sheidlower is a lexicographer, a former Editor at Large for the Oxford English Dictionary, and a longtime friend. He’s someone who takes equal pleasure in the words ‘usufructuary’ and ‘megaboss,’ and therefore a welcome collaborator for the typeface designer whose love of the Flemish baroque is matched by a fondness for alphabets made of logs. Jesse was preparing to launch The Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, a comprehensive online resource dedicated to the terminology of the genre, whose combination of scholarship and joy was a perfect fit for the typeface I imagined. For linguists, there’d be well-researched citations to explain how the hitherto uninvented ‘force field’ and ‘warp speed’ came to enter the lexicon. For science fiction fans, there’d be definitive (and sometimes surprising) histories of the argot of Stars both Trek and Wars. And for everyone, there’d be the pleasure of discovering science fiction’s less enduring contributions, from ‘saucerman’ to ‘braintape,’ each ripe for a comeback. A moderated, crowdsourced project, the dictionary is now online and growing every day. You’ll find it dressed in three font families from H&Co: Whitney ScreenSmart for its text, Decimal for its navigational icons, and Sagittarius for its headlines — with some of the font’s more fantastical alternate characters turned on. The New Typeface Sagittarius is a typeface whose rounded corners and streamlined forms give it a romantically scientific voice. In the interest of versatility, its letterforms make only oblique references to specific technologies, helping the typeface remain open to interpretation. But for projects that need the full-throated voice of science fiction, a few sets of digital accessories are included, which designers can introduce at their own discretion. There are alternate letters with futuristic pedigrees, from the barless A popularized by Danne & Blackburn’s 1975 ‘worm’ logo for NASA, to a disconnected K recalling the 1968 RCA logo by Lippincott & Margulies. A collection of digitally-inspired symbols are included for decorative use, from the evocative MICR symbols of electronic banking, to the obligatory barcodes that forever haunt human–machine interactions. More widely applicable are the font’s arrows and manicules, and the automatic substitutions that resolve thirty-four awkward combinations of letters with streamlined ligatures. About the Name Sagittarius is one of thirteen constellations of the zodiac, and home to some of astronomy’s most inspiring discoveries. In 1977, a powerful radio signal originating in the Sagittarius constellation was considered by many to be the most compelling recorded evidence of extraterrestrial life. Thanks to an astronomer’s enthusiastically penned comment, the 72-second transmission became known as the Wow! signal, and it galvanized support for one of science’s most affecting projects, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). More recently, Sagittarius has been identified as the location of a staggering celestial discovery: a supermassive black hole, some 44 million kilometers in diameter, in the Galactic Center of the Milky Way. <

Tavern is a super font family based on our Algerian Mesa design, with Tavern we've greatly expanded the usability by creating light and bold weights plus all new for 2020 with the introduction of extra bold and black weights Tavern is now a five weight family. The addition of the bold weight made it possible to go further with the design by adding open faced shadowed, outline and fill versions. Please note, the fill fonts are aligned to go with the open faced versions, they may work with the outline versions, however you will have to apply them one letter at a time. The Tavern Fill fonts may also be used a stand alone font, however, the spacing is much wider than the regular solid black weights of Tavern. In the old days of printing, fill fonts rarely lined up perfect with the open or outline font, this created a misprinted look that's much in style today. To create that misprinted look using two different colors, try layering the outline fonts offset over the top of the solid black versions. Next we come to the small caps and X versions, for a font that's mostly seen used in all caps we felt a small caps would come in handy. The X in Tavern X stands for higher X-height, we've taken our standard lowercase and raised it for greater visibility in small text and for signage where you want the look of a lowercase but it needs to be readable from the street. In August of 2016 I started the project of expanding this font into more weights after seeing the font in use where someone tried creating a bold version by adding a stroke fill around the letters. The result didn't look very good, the stroke fill also caused the shadow line to merge with the serifs on some letters. This lead me to experiment to see if a new bold weight was possible for this font and I'm pleased to say that it was. After the bold weight was finished I decided to type the regular and bold weights together in a first word thin second word bold combination, however the weight difference between the two wasn't enough contrast. This lead me to wonder if a lighter weight was possible for this font, as you can see yes it was, so now for the first time in the history of this old 1908 type design you can type a first word thin second word bold combination. So why the name change from Algerian to Tavern? Since the original font was designed in England by the Stephenson Blake type foundry I decided to give this font a name that reminded you of the country it came from, however, there were other more technical reasons. During the creation of the bold weight the engraved shadow line was sticking out too far horizontally on the bottom right of the serifs dramatically throwing the whole font off balance. The original font encountered this problem on the uppercase E, L and Z, their solution was a diagonal cut corner which was now needed across any glyph in the new bold weight with a serif on the bottom right side. In order to make the light and regular weights blend well with the bold weight diagonal cut offs were needed and added as well. This changed the look of the font from the original and why I decided to change the name, additional concerns were, if you're designing a period piece where the font needs to be authentic then this font would be too new. Regular vs. Alt version? The alternate version came about after seeing the regular version used as a logo and secondary text on a major product label. I felt that some of the features of the regular version didn't look good as smaller secondary text, this gave me the idea to create an alternate version that would work well for secondary text in an advertising layout. But don't stop there, the alternate version can be used as a logo too and feel free to exchange letters between both regular and alternate versions. Where are the original alternates from Algerian? Original alternates from Algerian are built into the regular versions of Tavern plus new alternates have been created. We're excited to introduce, for the first time, all new swash capitals for this classic font, you're going to love the way they look in your ad layout, sign or logo. The best way to access alternate letters in Tavern is with the glyph map in Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign products, from Adobe Illustrator you can copy and paste into Photoshop as a smart object and take advantage of all the text layer style features Photoshop has to offer. There may be third party character maps available for accessing alternate glyphs but we can't advise you in that area. I know what you're thinking, will there be a Tavern Condensed? It takes a lot of hours to produce a large font family such as this, a future condensed version will depend on how popular this standard version is. If you love Tavern we're happy to introduce the first weathered edge version of this font called Bay Tavern available in February 2020.

SHILIA – AN ARABIC FONT THAT LIVES HAND IN HAND WITH LATIN TEXT CHARACTERS A special design principle underlies the Arabic font Shilia created by Mamoun Sakkal: the form of the characters means that they harmonise happily with sans serif Latin fonts, such as Univers. Because of this, Shilia is the ideal choice for any bilingual project and for use in international corporate branding. Shilia™ had its beginnings in the 1970s. Taking one of the oldest variants of Arabic script, the minimalist Kufic, as his inspiration, Mamoun Sakkal fashioned simple stroke shapes that are combined according to a geometric grid. Shilia is at home in both worlds, that of the East and that of the West. And although Shilia has been primarily designed to be used as a display font, it is also ideal for setting shorter texts. Before being published by Linotype, Shilia underwent major adaptation and updating, and is now available in the modern OpenType format. Mamoun Sakkal increased the characters available per individual typeface variant to over 1,800, and his daughter, Aida Sakkal, worked on programming the extensive OpenType features for the font. There are numerous ligatures that can be used to provide suitable variation and avoid repetition within a given context, and many special features such as the dots under the initial and final segments of words being automatically centralised. Shilia not only supports Arabic, but also Persian and Urdu. Special character combinations for setting texts in these languages, particularly Urdu, are provided through OpenType. And there are a total of 19 stylistic sets with additional character variants available to the user. An example of Urdu text Shilia is available in eight weights, from UltraLight to Black. The corresponding condensed versions are in the course of preparation. Along with the Arabic characters, all of the typeface versions include matching Latin alphabet letters of Adrian Frutiger’s Linotype Univers® family, making Shilia intrinsically suitable for setting bilingual texts. A set of ornaments carefully designed to allow for numerous compositions of bands and decorative patterns rounds off the range of characters on offer. With its 21 weights, Shilia is one of the most extensive of Arabic typeface families that is currently on the market. Its clear and well-balanced forms emphasise the linear nature of the font without allowing it to appear sterile or artificial. Shilia not only cuts a good figure as a display font for signage or in artistic projects, thanks to its substantial range of features, the font family can also be used to set texts, such as corporate and administrative documents. In addition, but the full compatibility between the Arabic and Latin characters makes Shilia the perfect choice for international and multilingual design projects.

The idea behind designing ‘Matwin’ font was related to the youngest children of the designer namely the M-A fraternal twin. The name of the typeface (i.e., Matwin or M-A-Twin) was composed by merging three linguistic small syllables. The ‘-Twin’ syllable refers to the non-identical twin of the designer. The ‘M-’ and ‘A-’ syllables refer to the initial letters of the twin’s first names (i.e., Muhammad and Abdul-Wli) respectively. The typeface ‘Matwin’ has a personal trait which makes it as one of the most favorite fonts for the designer among his humble collection of fonts. Modestly, it is the designer’s handwriting and it has been designed to be added to the script font family known as brush un-joined. The brief process for having this typeface alive was done by firstly scanning the real script for each Latin letter, digit, symbol which were handwritten earlier by the designer himself. Then, the combination of these many scanned characters was manipulated using digital programs to produce at the end the complete typeface. The typeface has the essential glyphs comprising the character set required for most of the Latin, Western, and Eastern European languages including the Irish language. It combines +605 characters and this makes it as a pro font. It also entitles it to be applicable for usage in many languages of different communities and nations worldwide. ‘Matwin’ is dedicated for those who search for a genuine handwriting typeface with a natural touch and informal style to be added on their different published and produced products and services. It is more preferable when it is used in artistic, typographic, and other works using the lowercase letters or by mixing both upper- and lower-case letters. Moreover, the typeface is appropriate for any type of typographic and graphic designs in web, print, and other media such as boards and walls. It is also preferable to be used in the wide fields related to publications especially children-related ones, comics, printed or handwritten menus of cafeterias and restaurants at universities and public places, as well as other prints related to services and production industries. It also can create a very personal and friendly impact when used in headlines, books and novels’ covers, posters, titles, messages, envelopes addresses, grocery lists, postcards, ads, fliers, journals, paper arts, public notices, invitations, scrapbooks, notations, products’ surfaces for organic foods and juices, logos, medical packages related to children, Android applications, as well as products and corporates branding and the like. In a nutshell, ‘Matwin’ typeface fits without a glitch those (i.e., designers, typographers, publishers, artists, packagers, service providers, and so on) who have drastic and strong tendency towards imprinting their works with spontaneous and outlandish touches made by this typeface. Please, enjoy it extremely.

Irrlicht is based on C. H. Kleukens’ 1923 typeface Judith Type . Whilst Dunkle Irrlicht is a fairly faithful rendition and extension of Kleukens’ typeface, the Licht style was initially added as a stand-alone stencil version; yet, the two styles work perfectly together – for different nuances, for emphasis or simply stacked/layered. Irrlicht is equipped with upper- and lowercase ligatures, contextual and stylistic alternates, fractions, superior and inferior figures, extended language support and a few extra goodies. Additional information – How Irrlicht came to life Christian Heinrich Kleukens cut his Judith Type in 1923, at the peak of German expressionism, exclusively for publications with the Ernst-Ludwig-Press, such as a limited series of biblical prints – the first being the Book of Judith , hence the original’s name. I stumbled upon this typeface a couple of years ago in a nice little 1930 booklet of the Gutenberg-Gesellschaft and was struck by its forceful darkness on paper and its seemingly simple, crude letterforms. The lack of a long-ſ in the final version of Judith Type – quite unusual for a German typeface of that time – adds to this feel of crudeness and spontaneity*. Judith Type seemed to me like a semi-blackletter cousin of Rudolf Koch’s typeface Neuland (cast in the same year). Besides its apparent affinity with expressionism, it reflects a lot of that deeply spiritual craftsmanship of the era – much like Neuland. A few months later, when I was working on a stencil project and looking for a typeface that could be cut into thin wooden plates easily, I remembered those dark, sharp letters that seemed to be lacking any curves at all. After enlarging a few letters and tracing them by hand, the whole set was redrawn digitally, using only straight lines. As for spacing, the goal was to keep the letters tight but to avoid touching characters – without ironing out all the original’s tension and rhythm. Deliberate kerning, subtle contextual alternates and ligatures help to deal with critical glyph combinations. Two additional versions were developed: a stencil version with open counters and, in reference to a popular style of the 1920s and inspired by dry, cracked wood, an inline version. These two additional styles were later merged into one font – Lichte** Irrlicht was born. — AARHAUS * Consequently, the original typeface’s German eszett is simply a ligature of the “round s” and standard z . In some of his publications, Kleukens dispenses with using eszett altogether and sets double s instead. Irrlicht , however, does feature a more common eszett (ß); the original, among other more faithful letter forms, can be accessed via the stylistic sets feature ** licht – literally bright – being the German term for inline typefaces – not to be confused with leicht ( light )