I spend a lot of time following two obsessions: packaging and hand lettering. Alongside a few other minor obsessions, those two have been my major ones for so many years now, I've finally reached the point where I can actually claim them as “obsessions” without getting a dramatic reaction from the little voice in the back of my head. When you spend so much time researching and studying a subject, you become very focused, directionally and objectively. But of course some of the research material you run into turns out to be tangential to whatever your focus happens to be at the time, so you absorb what you can from it, then shelf it — like the celebrity bobblehead that amused you for a while, but is now an almost invisible ornament eating dust and feathers somewhere in your environment. And just like the bobblehead may fall off the shelf one day to remind you of its existence, some of my lettering research material unveiled itself in my head one day for no particular reason. Hand lettering is now mostly perceived as an American art. Someone with my historical knowledge about lettering may be snooty enough to go as far as pointing out the British origins of almost everything American, including lettering — but for the most part, the contemporary perspective associates great lettering with America. The same perspective also associates blackletter, gothics and sans serifs with Germany. So you can imagine my simultaneous surprise and impatience when, in my research for one of my American lettering-based fonts, I ran into a German lettering book from 1953, by an artist called Bentele. It was no use for me because it didn't propel my focus at that particular time, but a few months ago I was marveling at what we take for granted — the sky is blue, blackletter is German, lettering is American — and found myself flipping through the pages of that book again. The lettering in that book is upbeat and casual sign making stuff, but it has a slightly strange and youthful experimentation at its heart. I suppose I find it strange because it deviates a lot from the American stuff I'm used to working with for so long now. To make a long story short, what’s inside that German book served as the semilla, which is Spanish for seed, for the typeface you see all over these pages. With Semilla, my normal routine went out the window. My life for a while was all Bezier all the time. No special analog or digital brushes or pens were used in drawing these forms. They're the product of a true Bezier process, all starting with a point creating a curve to another point, which draws a curve to another point, and so on. It’s a very time-consuming process, but at the end I am satisfied that it can get to pretty much the same results easier and more traditional methods accomplish. And as usual with my fonts, the OpenType is plenty and a lot of fun. Experimenting with substitution and automation is still a great pleasure for me. It is the OpenType that always saves me from the seemingly endless work hours every type designer must inevitably have to face at one point in his career. The artful photos used in this booklet are by French photographer and designer Stéphane Giner. He is very deserving of your patronage, so please keep an eye out for his marvelous work. I hope you like Semilla and enjoy using it. I have a feeling that it marks a transition to a more curious and flexible period in my career, but only time will tell.

Introducing Ultra System; A modern exploration of 8 fonts, each carefully designed to naturally compliment one another. With 6 clean sans fonts and 2 textured script fonts, Ultra System gives you a variety of ways to combine and arrange each font, allowing you to create striking & modern typographic designs. This typeface collection consists of 8 fonts; Ultra System Script • A textured, bouncy & flowing marker script font containing upper & lowercase characters, numerals, and a large range of punctuation. Ultra System Script Alt • This is a second version of Ultra System Script, with a completely new set of both upper and lowercase characters. If you wanted to avoid letters looking the same each time to recreate a custom-made style, or try a different word shape, simply switch to this font for an additional layout option. Ultra System Sans • A wide, bold sans font containing uppercase only characters, numerals, and a large range of punctuation. Ultra System Sans Line One • A thick outlined version of Ultra System Sans, pair this with other Ultra System Sans fonts to add emphasis to words or phrases. Ultra System Sans Line Two • A thin outlined version of Ultra System Sans, pair this with other Ultra System Sans fonts to add emphasis to words or phrases. Ultra System Sans Italic • Italic variations are included for all 3 Ultra System Sans fonts. FAQs; Accessing Ligatures • Ligatures are supported by most desktop graphics & text software (not just the fancy ones!), including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Word, Pages & Keynote. Many programs will automatically have this feature switched on for you, but if you need any help accessing then please feel free to drop me a message. Language Support • All Ultra System fonts support the following languages; English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Indonesian, Malay, Hungarian, Polish, Croatian, Turkish, Romanian, Czech, Latvian, Lithuanian, Slovak, Slovenian

Plantin is a family of text typefaces created by Monotype in 1913. Their namesake, Christophe Plantin (Christoffel Plantijn in Dutch), was born in France during the year 1520. In 1549, he moved to Antwerp, located in present-day Belgium. There he began printing in 1555. For a brief time, he also worked at the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands. Typefaces used in Christophe Plantin's books inspired future typographic developments. In 1913, the English Monotype Corporation's manager Frank Hinman Pierpont directed the Plantin revival. Based on 16th century specimens from the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, specifically a type cut by Robert Granjon and a separate cursive Italic, the Plantin" typeface was conceived. Plantin was drawn for use in mechanical typesetting on the international publishing markets. Plantin, and the historical models that inspired it, are old-style typefaces in the French manner, but with x-height that are larger than those found in Claude Garamond's work. Plantin would go on to influence another Monotype design, Times New Roman. Stanley Morison and Victor Larent used Plantin as a reference during that typeface's cutting. Like Garamond, Plantin is exceptionally legible and makes a classic, elegant impression. Plantin is indeed a remarkably accommodating type face. The firm modelling of the strokes and the serifs in the letters make the mass appearance stronger than usual; the absence of thin elements ensures a good result on coated papers; and the compact structure of the letters, without loss of size makes Plantin one of the economical faces in use. In short, it is essentially an all-purpose face, excellent for periodical or jobbing work, and very effective in many sorts of book and magazine publishing. Plantin's Bold weight was especially optimized to provide ample contrast: bulkiness was avoided by introducing a slight sharpening to the serifs' forms."

In 1995, FontHaus came upon a rare opportunity to create a revival of Aries, a little known and previously unavailable typeface by the legendary Eric Gill. Discovering a lost typeface by one of the major designers of the 20th Century, was the discovery of a buried treasure, and being the first type company to release it was an honor. Thirteen years later, FontHaus came across another little known typeface treasure: Diane. Designed by the legendary French designer Roger Excoffon in 1956, this remarkable script has never been faithfully recreated until now. In close collaboration with Mark Simonson, FontHaus and Mr. Simonson painstakingly researched rare type books, publications, European metal type services, and period showings from the United States, England, Germany and from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Finding full specimens of the font turned out to be quite a challenge. In most cases, only the caps and lowercase were shown. Furthermore, the more we researched Diane, many curious facts came to light. The caps in earlier specimens of Diane are completely different from specimens published later, suggesting that the face was redesigned at some point, perhaps in the mid-1960s. So we are left with two different sets of caps. The original had very elaborate, swirly strokes, very characteristic of Excoffon¹s gestural designs for posters and logos. Later on, these appear to have been replaced by a set of simpler, more traditional script caps. The original caps are criticized in one source Mark found (Practical Handbook on Display Typefaces, 1959) as being "exquisite" but "not highly legible". Perhaps this is what led to the simpler caps being introduced. Nevertheless, FontHaus's release includes not only both sets of caps, but a range of alternates and a number of new characters not originally available such as the Euro, and a magnificent alternate Ampersand to name a few.

RAN Reformed Typeface for Beginners by Georg Salden - 
a headstrong and courageous approach to an improved handling of handwriting. Diverse and sometimes irreconcilable theories exist about how beginners are supposed to learn writing and reading. This has led to fierce discussions among experts already. We don’t want to pour more oil on the fire, but hope to create a new awareness for this topic, which is important to everyone of us. For beginners the combination of single characters (sounds) to whole words is essential during the acquirement of reading and writing. In this process they develop the skill to recall entire terms from memory. Therefore, after current practice, every word shall be written in a single stroke without lifting the pen in between. Georg Salden contradicts this postulate and warns, that coercively holding the pen down within a word can easily lead to exaggerated loop formations and a general meandering of the written text. The intellectual process in connecting single sounds to words while writing would happen anyway and the prohibition to lift the pen would often lead to tensions. 
To still support the necessary connections in general and to simplify the connecting, he teaches to write all round letters like a, e, g, o with inclusion of the connecting stroke, so that the spacing and combining with the next character arise by themselves. By settling the stroke at certain points and with a clear and logical writing method, a conscious and careful contact with the various strokes arises. All this automatically leads, together with a certain deceleration, to an increase of beauty and readability in the handwriting. 
The repeatedly discussed topic »connected or unconnected« appears to be solved in the most comfortable way as, depending on the particular character combination, both solutions are possible.

Avenir Next Pro is a new take on a classic face—it’s the result of a project whose goal was to take a beautifully designed sans and update it so that its technical standards surpass the status quo, leaving us with a truly superior sans family. This family is not only an update though; in fact it is the expansion of the original concept that takes the Avenir Next design to the next level. In addition to the standard styles ranging from ultralight to heavy, this 32-font collection offers condensed faces that rival any other sans on the market in on and off—screen readability at any size alongside heavy weights that would make excellent display faces in their own right and have the ability to pair well with so many contemporary serif body types. Overall, the family’s design is clean, straightforward and works brilliantly for blocks of copy and headlines alike. Akira Kobayashi worked alongside Avenir’s esteemed creator Adrian Frutiger to bring Avenir Next Pro to life. It was Akira’s ability to bring his own finesse and ideas for expansion into the project while remaining true to Frutiger’s original intent, that makes this not just a modern typeface, but one ahead of its time. Avenir Next Variables are font files which are featuring two axis, weight and width. They have a preset instance from UltraLight to Heavy and Condensed to Roman width. The preset instances are: Condensed UltraLight, Condensed UltraLight Italic, Condensed Thin, Condensed Thin Italic, Condensed Light, Condensed Light Italic, Condensed, Condensed Italic, Condensed Demi, Condensed Demi Italic, Condensed Medium, Condensed Medium Italic, Condensed Bold, Condensed Bold Italic, Condensed Heavy, Condensed Heavy Italic, UltraLight, UltraLight Italic, Thin, Thin Italic, Light, Light Italic, Regular, Italic, Demi, Demi Italic, Medium, Medium Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Heavy, Heavy Italic.

Swansbury, Inc. provides handwriting instruction to all ages, accompanied by two exemplar fonts, Barchowsky Fluent Hand.otf and Barchowsky Dot.otf. The basis for the design of the characters is the italic of the Renaissance. With the advantage of contextual alternates, Barchowsky Fluent Hand automatically joins lowercase letters so it can be used in any venue where a clean and elegant appearance of handwriting is desired. The fonts allow maximum instructional flexibility. Aside from their use in lesson plans, educators can customize pages for specific student interests, studies and needs. Included are all math symbols that one typically encounters in school curricula. Nan Jay Barchowsky, designer of this font, believes that children should hone their handwriting skills as they learn all subjects, reading, math, history and foreign languages. Both fonts support all Western European languages and Turkish. Barchowsky Dot is for young children or others who need remediation. The letterforms are identical to those in Barchowsky Fluent Hand. Used at a large point size open dots appear within the lines that form the characters indicating where one should start each stroke in a letter or number. Once formations are learned Barchowsky Fluent Hand can be used with the contextual alternates turned off until students are ready to write in the joined-up manner of a true cursive. Specifications: The technology for fonts that automatically join letters, or allow them to be unjoined is relatively new. At present, both fonts work on Windows XP with Service Pack 1 or later (or Vista), using AbiWord, a free word processor (go to abisource.com). They also work well with InDesign 2. Currently there is an unknown factor in later versions of InDesign for Windows that disallows joining. Macs completely support the fonts using InDesign 2 and later, PhotoshopCS and IllustratorCS. If you do not have these applications, there is an inexpensive word processor for Macs.

The Madison Ave. family started from Madison Ave. at Fontstruct.com. As my most downloaded font, this was an easy, although not necessarily logical choice to make – regarding taking an existing free font and attempting to offer it for purchase. The font is very basic and simple in its layout, but has achieved popularity over at Dafont with almost 80,000 downloads with its cool, understated nature and inherent sophistication. The original Madison Ave. is now 95 Madison Ave. A couple of glyphs have changed from the original, but mostly the set is the same. The big news here is the availability of multiple variations on the original. Ninety-five refers to the filter settings used to achieve the faint cross lines in the font. The sequence 95-100 provides a gradual fade to solid effect when used together. The other versions use variations on the filter settings that allow each its own distinctive flavor, while at the same time maintaining inherent characteristics of the original. Ninety-five is now joined by 55, 75, 97, 99, 100, 102, 105, 155, 175, 201, 202, and 275. 100 is the solid version which doesn’t contain the trademark lines found in 95. In 95-99, the line width varies to achieve subtle effects. 50 and 85 are distorted by reducing the filter settings in a somewhat minimizing fashion. In 102-205, these are distorted by increasing the filter settings above the normal which is what 100 represents. While some of the effects are extreme and challenge the legibility of text, these can be fun or edgy. They offer a cohesion that can be used to advantage for different projects that require the use of a modern font family.

TT Slabs update 1.110 What’s new: Case Sensitive Forms Tabular Figures Fractions Numerators Denominators Superiors Scientific Inferiors TT Slabs useful links: Customization options | Instagram | Facebook | Website About TT Slabs: World needs a beautiful, simple and high-quality fonts. We need simple and geometric fonts. Slab is a form of serifs, which gave its name to the font family. If you are looking for a versatile font with wide proportions for your projects—TT Slabs will suit you perfectly. Optimized for the websites, mobile applications, and printing materials. We offer you to have a look at this font’s narrow version—TT Slabs Condensed. TT Slabs language support: Acehnese, Afar, Albanian, Alsatian, Aragonese, Arumanian, Asu, Aymara, Banjar, Basque, Belarusian (cyr), Bemba, Bena, Betawi, Bislama, Boholano, Bosnian (cyr), Bosnian (lat), Breton, Bulgarian (cyr), Cebuano, Chamorro, Chiga, Colognian, Cornish, Corsican, Cree, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Embu, English, Erzya, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Gaelic, Gagauz (lat), Galician, German, Gusii, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiri Motu, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Innu-aimun, Interlingua, Irish, Italian, Javanese, Judaeo-Spanish, Judaeo-Spanish, Kalenjin, Karachay-Balkar (lat), Karaim (lat), Karakalpak (lat), Kashubian, Khasi, Khvarshi, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kongo, Kumyk, Kurdish (lat), Ladin, Latvian, Laz, Leonese, Lithuanian, Luganda, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Macedonian, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malay, Manx, Maori, Mauritian Creole, Minangkabau, Montenegrin (lat), Mordvin-moksha, Morisyen, Nahuatl, Nauruan, Ndebele, Nias, Nogai, Norwegian, Nyankole, Occitan, Oromo, Palauan, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rheto-Romance, Rohingya, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Russian, Rusyn, Rwa, Salar, Samburu, Samoan, Sango, Sangu, Scots, Sena, Serbian (cyr), Serbian (lat), Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Shona, Slovak, Slovenian, Soga, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Swiss German, Swiss German, Tagalog, Tahitian, Taita, Tatar, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Tsonga, Tswana, Turkish, Turkmen (lat), Ukrainian, Uyghur, Vepsian, Volapük, Võro, Vunjo, Xhosa, Zaza, Zulu.

Avenir Next Pro is a new take on a classic face—it’s the result of a project whose goal was to take a beautifully designed sans and update it so that its technical standards surpass the status quo, leaving us with a truly superior sans family. This family is not only an update though; in fact it is the expansion of the original concept that takes the Avenir Next design to the next level. In addition to the standard styles ranging from ultralight to heavy, this 32-font collection offers condensed faces that rival any other sans on the market in on and off—screen readability at any size alongside heavy weights that would make excellent display faces in their own right and have the ability to pair well with so many contemporary serif body types. Overall, the family’s design is clean, straightforward and works brilliantly for blocks of copy and headlines alike. Akira Kobayashi worked alongside Avenir’s esteemed creator Adrian Frutiger to bring Avenir Next Pro to life. It was Akira’s ability to bring his own finesse and ideas for expansion into the project while remaining true to Frutiger’s original intent, that makes this not just a modern typeface, but one ahead of its time. Avenir Next Variables are font files which are featuring two axis, weight and width. They have a preset instance from UltraLight to Heavy and Condensed to Roman width. The preset instances are: Condensed UltraLight, Condensed UltraLight Italic, Condensed Thin, Condensed Thin Italic, Condensed Light, Condensed Light Italic, Condensed, Condensed Italic, Condensed Demi, Condensed Demi Italic, Condensed Medium, Condensed Medium Italic, Condensed Bold, Condensed Bold Italic, Condensed Heavy, Condensed Heavy Italic, UltraLight, UltraLight Italic, Thin, Thin Italic, Light, Light Italic, Regular, Italic, Demi, Demi Italic, Medium, Medium Italic, Bold, Bold Italic, Heavy, Heavy Italic.

TT Corals useful links: Graphic presentation | Customization options TT Corals is a modern humanist sans-serif which has many typical traits of the beginning of the 20th century. For increased functionality, we created 6 styles of various weights: thin, light, regular, bold, extrabold and black. Its distinctive smooth lines and separate elements allow TT Corals to be used for a variety of design applications. It fits classical literature or music perfectly, and is appropriate for any creative or innovative content. TT Corals inspires new ideas for your creativity and art with its freshness and novelty. FOLLOW US: Instagram | Facebook | Website TT Corals language support: Acehnese, Afar, Albanian, Alsatian, Aragonese, Arumanian, Asu, Aymara, Banjar, Basque, Belarusian (cyr), Bemba, Bena, Betawi, Bislama, Boholano, Bosnian (cyr), Bosnian (lat), Breton, Bulgarian (cyr), Cebuano, Chamorro, Chiga, Colognian, Cornish, Corsican, Cree, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Embu, English, Erzya, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Gaelic, Gagauz (lat), Galician, German, Gusii, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiri Motu, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Innu-aimun, Interlingua, Irish, Italian, Javanese, Judaeo-Spanish, Judaeo-Spanish, Kalenjin, Karachay-Balkar (lat), Karaim (lat), Karakalpak (lat), Kashubian, Khasi, Khvarshi, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kongo, Kumyk, Kurdish (lat), Ladin, Latvian, Laz, Leonese, Lithuanian, Luganda, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Macedonian, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malay, Manx, Maori, Mauritian Creole, Minangkabau, Moldavian (lat), Montenegrin (lat), Mordvin-moksha, Morisyen, Nahuatl, Nauruan, Ndebele, Nias, Nogai, Norwegian, Nyankole, Occitan, Oromo, Palauan, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rheto-Romance, Rohingya, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Russian, Rusyn, Rwa, Salar, Samburu, Samoan, Sango, Sangu, Scots, Sena, Serbian (cyr), Serbian (lat), Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Shona, Slovak, Slovenian, Soga, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Swiss German, Swiss German, Tagalog, Tahitian, Taita, Tatar, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Tsonga, Tswana, Turkish, Turkmen (lat), Ukrainian, Uyghur, Vepsian, Volapük, Võro, Vunjo, Xhosa, Zaza, Zulu.

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.

ITC Christoph's Quill is just about everything you could want in a typeface: it's distinctive, beautiful, and exceptionally versatile. According to designer Russell Bean, ITC Christoph's Quill is the culmination of experimentation with a graphics tablet that spanned several years. Then one day, as if by magic, it all just fell into place. The design seemed to flow from my pen." Bean was born in Australia and, except for a brief stint with a photo-lettering firm in Southern California, has spent most of his career working down under. "I can recall a deep fascination for the written word," he says. "Even before learning to spell, read or write, I think I recognized that this was a means of visual communication." Bean's first job was in a small ad agency as a trainee in the production department, where he learned art techniques and how to handle print, as well as "the value of visual impressions," he says. His career path meandered from one design job to another, but always in the general direction of fonts and typefaces. Today, his workload consists of logo design commissions, font editing, typography and print production consultation to a select group of loyal clients - still leaving time, notes Bean, "to pursue my type design ambitions." ITC Christoph's Quill began life as a simple, visually striking font of caps, lowercase, punctuation and numerals. To this Bean added a bold weight, for when a little more strength is desirable. Next came a flock of alternate characters. Finally, Bean drew a set of decorative caps, a suite of logos, and a sprinkling of beginning and ending swashes. The net result is a type family that can add a signature flourish to a vast range of projects: from invitations and menus to logos, signage, packaging and more."