The Palatino™ typeface was first designed over 50 years ago by Hermann Zapf, and is probably the most universally admired and used of his type designs. In 1950, it was punchcut in metal by August Rosenberger at D. Stempel AG typefoundry in Frankfurt am Main, and then adapted for Linotype machine composition. Zapf optimized Palatino's design for legibility by giving it open counters and carefully weighted strokes, producing a typeface that was legible even on the inferior paper of the post-World War II period. The font was named after Giambattista Palatino, a master of calligraphy from the time of Leonardo da Vinci. Palatino is a typeface based on classical Italian Renaissance forms. It has become a modern classic in itself, and is popular among professional graphic designers and amateurs alike. Palatino works well for both text and display typography. The new Palatino™ Linotype typefaces are OpenType format fonts, which include many newly designed characters in four large character sets; including extensive support for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets, as well as for Central European and many other languages. The Palatino Linotype OpenType fonts contains the following Microsoft code pages: 1252 Latin 1, 1250 Latin 2 Eastern, 1251 Cyrillic, 1253 Greek with polytonic Greek, 1254 Turk, 1257 Windows Baltic, and 1258 Windows Vietnamese. The fonts also include many ligature glyphs, including some historical long s-ligatures, as well as sets of Small Caps, Old style Figures, and vertical & diagonal fractions. Each font contains 1325 different glyphs.

Rather than confining itself to a single style, Ricardo combines the best of two worlds: the conceptual clarity of a geometric design with the legibility and warmth of a humanist design. Its open counters, crisp joints, and even texture allow for effective use in long-form text settings, while its simple geometric shapes combined with some unexpected details make it highly suitable for display settings such as branding and marketing. Ricardo contains seven carefully chosen weights, ranging from ExtraLight to ExtraBold. The Medium weight functions as a slightly darker alternative to the Regular. Ricardo’s 812 glyphs per style support over a hundred languages, and also include arrows and case-sensitive punctuation. The Ricardo family consists of three subfamilies: Ricardo, Ricardo ALT, and Ricardo ITA. Ricardo contains the most conventional forms, and is the most suitable option for long-form text. Ricardo ALT contains simplified shapes for the a, j, u, and t, which are also accessible through Stylistic Set 2 within Ricardo (in opentype-savvy applications). The cursive-like italics of Ricardo ITA provide a slightly more eccentric alternative to the standard italics. Furthermore, all styles contain stylistic alternates that swap the blunt apexes in A, M, N, V, W, v, w, y, and 1 for pointier ones. These are also accessible through Stylistic Set 1. Other opentype goodness includes: (discretionary) ligatures, smallcaps, case-sensitive forms, fractions, nine sets of numerals, and more. David Ricardo (1772-1823) is considered the first of the classical economists, and combined ground-breaking mathematical abstractions with an understandable down-to-earth way of explaining his ideas.

SHE'S DEAD, FRANK It's the year 1991, BC (Before Comicraft) when REM were still making records and Frank Miller’s memorable run on Marvel Comics’ DAREDEVIL was just over ten years old. Comicraft’s Richard Starkings found himself working in Anaheim, California for Graphitti Designs. Graphitti had produced the first hardcover edition of Miller’s Batman tale, DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and was now putting together the sequel to Miller’s DAREDEVIL — ELEKTRA LIVES AGAIN! Richard was not engaged to letter this book, the pages of Frank’s incredible original art that came through Graphitti’s studio were already lettered by Marvel Stalwart, Jim Novak. However, there were some cover elements that needed to be added, based on the logo originally rendered by Frank’s brother, Steve. Starkings set about the task of creating an alphabet that could be used to develop Steve’s idea for the trade dress -- the cover elements, the back cover copy and credits on the interior pages. This was long before Macintosh computers and font programs made this work considerably easier, so Rich sat down with a pencil and a sheet of vellum and rendered an alphabet that could be used as the basis for the text that was needed... Those sketches have languished in a drawer for nearly thirty years, but now, finally, Comicraft’s John Roshell has dusted off those old letterforms and Elektrakuted a font based on those designs, a font we HAD to call ELEKTRAKUTION! As for Elektra; she’s dead, Frank. Features: Ten weights (Light, Regular, Bold; Rough Light, Regular & Bold; Inline, Inline Rough, Outline & Outline Rough) with upper & lowercase characters, Western & Central European accents and Greek characters.

When Dupla was designed, its DNA shown the best of the typographic heritage from the XIX century types, the oldest san serif known, also named as “Grotesk”, a soft synonym for bizarre, unnatural weird. XIX century Germans' eyes were surprised, astonished by the formal strangeness that provoked the mutilation of the well known serifed types. But the skeleton and DNA are barely perceptible, an invisible part of the nature of objects. We are interested in the epidermis, the outer, the visible, which directly speak to the eyes, and Dupla tells us with overwhelming presence, that is a formal, traditional type, covered with a childlike sweetness, with slight curves, epidermic, sweetening even ink’s traps up. Frutiger said that Latin alphabet letter’s minimum skeleton is like a lock where you should fit all the letters you see, but that skeleton allows many skins. We use a different skin for every specific use. And Dupla’s skin points to how generous, how friendly it is; the sweetness of the big and good-natured. They do not feel very comfortable in low-cost airplanes company’s seats, but in the proper location with enough room, they'll fill the atmosphere with kindness. Do not ask for narrow columns, or terse captions in squalid sizes; do not ask for ridiculous “small print” in dark contracts where «The party of the first part shall be known in this contract as the party of the first part …» That’s not for Dupla. Large headlines, generous width columns to cover, rude pullquotes half-breaking columns, loud exclamations, great sizes, with black weights. It’s in the insultingly generous, almost obscene use where Dupla is felt. And if you consider this a obscene, gargantuan, typographical feast, Dupla brings you everything to demonstrate that quantity does not mean less quality. Multi-language support, Latin plus full coverage, complete sets of small caps, fractions, old numerals, modern, tabular, bonds and all the “gourmet” paraphernalia that Patau has accustomed us, after many years of work. If you want to be obscene and pass the censorship, use Dupla. Hedonism is just a venial sin.