Compendium is a sequel to my Burgues font from 2007. Actually it is more like a prequel to Burgues. Before Louis Madarasz awed the American Southeast with his disciplined corners and wild hairlines, Platt Rogers Spencer, up in Ohio, had laid down a style all his own, a style that would eventually become the groundwork for the veering calligraphic method that was later defined and developed by Madarasz. After I wrote the above paragraph, I was so surprised by it, particularly by the first two sentences, that I stopped and had to think about it for a week. Why a sequel/prequel? Am I subconsciously joining the ranks of typeface-as-brand designers? Are the tools I build finally taking control of me? Am I having to resort to “milking it” now? Not exactly. Even though the current trend of extending older popular typefaces can play tricks with a type designer’s mind, and maybe even send him into strange directions of planning, my purpose is not the extension of something popular. My purpose is presenting a more comprehensive picture as I keep coming to terms with my obsession with 19th century American penmanship. Those who already know my work probably have an idea about how obsessive I can be about presenting a complete and detailed image of the past through today’s eyes. So it is not hard to understand my need to expand on the Burgues concept in order to reach a fuller picture of how American calligraphy evolved in the 19th century. Burgues was really all about Madarasz, so much so that it bypasses the genius of those who came before him. Compendium seeks to put Madarasz’s work in a better chronological perspective, to show the rounds that led to the sharps, so to speak. And it is nearly criminal to ignore Spencer’s work, simply because it had a much wider influence on the scope of calligraphy in general. While Madarasz’s work managed to survive only through a handful of his students, Spencer’s work was disseminated throughout America by his children after he died in 1867. The Spencer sons were taught by their father and were great calligraphers themselves. They would pass the elegant Spencerian method on to thousands of American penmen and sign painters. Though Compendium has a naturally more normalized, Spencerian flow, its elegance, expressiveness, movement and precision are no less adventurous than Burgues. Nearing 700 glyphs, its character set contains plenty of variation in each letter, and many ornaments for letter beginnings, endings, and some that can even serve to envelope entire words with swashy calligraphic wonder. Those who love to explore typefaces in detail will be rewarded, thanks to OpenType. I am so in love with the technology now that it’s becoming harder for me to let go of a typeface and call it finished. You probably have noticed by now that my fascination with old calligraphy has not excluded my being influenced by modern design trends. This booklet is an example of this fusion of influences. I am living 150 years after the Spencers, so different contextualization and usage perspectives are inevitable. Here the photography of Gonzalo Aguilar join the digital branchings of Compendium to form visuals that dance and wave like the arms of humanity have been doing since time eternal. I hope you like Compendium and find it useful. I'm all Spencered out for now, but at one point, for history’s sake, I will make this a trilogy. When the hairline-and-swash bug visits me again, you will be the first to know. The PDF specimen was designed with the wonderful photography of Gonzalo Aguilar from Mexico. Please download it here http://new.myfonts.com/artwork?id=47049&subdir=original

There is plenty of lyric and literature about looking over one's shoulder in contemplation. What would you have done differently if you knew then what you know now? This is the kind of question that comes out of nowhere. When it does and whether its context is personal or professional make very little difference. It's a question that can cause emotions to rise and passions to run hot. It can trigger priority shifts and identity crises. It's never easy to answer. Three years ago, I published a font called Semilla. My aim with that was to distill the work of Bentele, a lettering artist from early 1950s Germany. Picking such an obscure figure back then was my way of pondering the meaning and efficiency of objectivity in a world where real human events and existences are inevitably filtered through decades of unavoidably subjective written, printed and oral history. And maybe to pat myself on the back for surviving surprises mild and pleasant. Having been fortunate enough to follow my professional whims for quite some time now, I took another, longer look at my idea of distilling Bentele's work again. I suppose the concepts of established history and objectivity can become quite malleable when personal experience is added to the mix. I say that because there I was, three years later, second-guessing myself and opining that Bentele's work can be distilled differently, in a manner more suited to current cultural angles. So I embarked on that mission, and Bowling Script is the result. I realize that it's difficult to reconcile this soft and happy calligraphic outcome with the introspection I've blathered about so far, but it is what is. I guess even self-created first world problems need to be resolved somehow, and the resolution can happen in mysterious ways. Bowling Script is what people who like my work would expect from me. It's yet another script loaded with all kinds of alternation, swashing and over-the-top stuff. All of that is in here. These days I think I just do all that stuff without even blinking. But there are two additional twists. The more noticeable one is ornamental: The stroke endings in the main font are of the typical sharp and curly variety found in sign painting, while the other font complements that with ball endings, sometimes with an added-on-afterwards impression rather than an extension of the actual stroke. In the philosophical terms I was mumbling earlier, this is the equivalent of alternate realities in a world of historical reduxes that by their very nature can never properly translate original fact. The second twist has to do with the disruption of angular rhythm in calligraphic alphabets. Of course, this is the kind of lettering where the very concept of rhythm can be quite flexible, but it still counts for something, and experimenting with angular white space in a project of a very dense footprint was irresistible. After playing for a bit, I decided that it would interesting to include the option of using optically back-slanted forms in the fonts. Most scripts out there, including mine, have a rhythm sonically comparable to four-to-the-floor club beats. So the weirdly angled stuff here is your chance to do the occasional drumroll. Everyone knows we need one of those sometimes. Bowling Script and Bowling Script Balls fonts comes with 1600 characters and features extended Latin-based language support. There are also a basic version of both fonts without all the alternates and extra OpenType features. Bowling family ships in cross-platform OpenType format. We also want to present “Mute”, a visual essay narated by Tomás García and Valentín Muro, about digital life created specially to introduce Bowling Script.

FG Noel works great at small and large sizes. I can imagine a kids' book with this font and it will be perfect for cute quotations on greeting cards.

FG Adam turned out (it always is like that) a bit crazy with the baseline shift it makes a good greeting card font. I like it and it's fun!

Handwritten with care, and made bold and consistent with an art deco flair. If I owned a classy diner, this is how I'd like my chalkboard menus to look.

FG Muriel is an all-caps font with different letters for caps and lowercase which can be combined to make it look like true handwriting. I love this font!

I made this cartoon book font in my own handwriting. This type of font is great for writing comic stories, children's games, and is perfect for making cartoon movies.

Astria is a swinging script, that works best in short headlines or as a decorative Element. I like it when the lines overlap, with letters flowing into each other.

Taco is a new Mexican style font family based on our Tavern and Algerian Mesa type designs. When I finished the extra heavier weights for Tavern I decided to play around with a decorated version, the extra bold letters allowed for much more room to work with an inlay pattern. After experimenting with several designs I decided on a Mexican pattern because the original base font is very popular in Mexican restaurant logos and menus plus it's frequently used on Tequila bottle labels. I originally planned three weights for the Taco font family, however, after completing the bold weight I've decided to release it now so you may put it to use while the regular and extra bold are being produced, sorry I can't estimate a release date for the two other weights. To use the fill font layers you'll need an application that allows you to work in layers such as Adobe Creative Suite products. The Taco Fill Uno font may be used as a stand alone font, however, we recommend searching for our Tavern font family where you'll find three different bold weights of this same design. Opentype features aware applications are also needed for accessing the many alternate glyphs in Taco, all the alternates that you love in our Tavern fonts are also available in Taco. While the fill font layers are in registration with one another some applications may throw them out of alignment by changing the spacing. Custom inter letter spacing in Adobe Creative Suite may also throw the fill fonts out of alignment. We recommend doing your custom spacing first then duplicate the type layer and change to the next fill font and color. The inspiration for the Taco name of this font family was from a homemade Taco dinner I made for a guest at my house, after dinner I searched to see if there was a commercial font named Taco. There was no such font named Taco and the rest is history. The old Stephenson Blake Algerian font has come a long way since 1908, and we're not done with it yet. We hope you enjoy our Taco font family, we're looking forward to see it in use.

When Candy Script was officially released and in the hands of a few designers, I was in the middle of a three-week trip in North America. After returning to Buenos Aires, I found a few reactions to the font in my inbox. Alongside the congratulatory notes, flattering samples of the face in use, and the inevitable three or four “How do I use it?” emails, one interesting note asked me to consider an italic counterpart. 

I had experimented with a few different angles during the initial brainstorming of the concept but never really thought of Candy Script as an upright italic character set. A few trials confirmed to me that an italic Candy Script would be a bad idea. However, some of these trials showed conceptual promise of their own, so I decided to pursue them and see where they would go. Initially, it seemed a few changes to the Candy Script forms would work well at angles ranging from 18 to 24 degrees, but as the typeface evolved, I realized all the forms had to be modified considerably for a typeface of this style to work as both a digital font and a true emulation of real hand-lettering. Those were the pre-birth contractions of the idea for this font. I called it Sugar Pie because it has a sweet taste similar to Candy Script, mostly due to its round-to-sharp terminal concept. This in turn echoes the concept of the clean brush scripts found in the different film type processes of late 1960s and early 1970s.
 
While Candy Script’s main visual appeal counts on the loops, swashes, and stroke extensions working within a concept of casual form variation, Sugar Pie is artistically a straightforward packaging typeface. Its many ligatures and alternates are just as visually effective as Candy Script’s but in a subtler and less pronounced fashion. The alternates and ligatures in Sugar Pie offer many nice variations on the main character set. Use them to achieve the right degree of softness you desire for your design. Take a look of the How to use PDF file in our gallery section for inspiration.

Named after Gian Giorgio Trissino (1478-1550) the Italian Renaissance humanist, poet, dramatist, diplomat and grammarian who was the first to explicitly distinguish I and J as seperate letter sounds.

LouLou is a scriptlike typeface that looks as if it came right out of the sixties and seventies. Flowerpower! I enjoyed doing this one. Your swinging type designer Gert Wiescher

I added the hollow model of the font he developed by taking an example from the ancient Greek inscriptions found in Turkey to my fonts. Use it in good works.

Bandage font is very emotional and innovative products! unique look to company branding, logos, greetings, magazine layout, homeware, prints and invitations. I hope you like it Available : uppercase, lowercase, numerals

My son Konstantin needs a bold face for his bold recipes. So I made Konstantin Forte for him — and the rest of the world. Your bold family designer, Gert Wiescher.

Nippon is a handdrawn cartoon font with an oriental touch. I based it on my earlier typeface, Morganhand, making it more angular, and added some calligraphic impression in the glyphs.

Sugar Flash is my grungy comic handmade font: I suggest that you use it for something that has to do with a partyinvitation or maybe products for kids...and sweets!

I come from a family of educators- my mom, husband, stepmom, brother-in-law, and sister are all currently teaching and I have taught in the past. This font was created after speaking to several elementary school teachers who were struggling to find just the right font to use on worksheets and projects in their classroom. They liked many features of other fonts, but needed small things altered in order to make a "perfect fit" for their class. Hand-drawn by me, this font hopefully addresses several of those issues. As penmanship styles vary across the globe, I am sure this font will not work in every classroom. But hopefully this style will work for many teachers to give their early readers a highly legible, neat, accurate font. It is best used with kerning turned on to allow for accurate letter spacing.

Gutter Pigeon is not your every-day Ransom-kind-of-font! The prices of making it was really simple: I only used my phone and computer. I took pictures of letter from newspapers, magazines, bookcovers, candybars, movieposters, roadsigns, etc. In the beginning, It was easy to find new letters. But as I had the initial letters, it became quite a search for the missing letters. Not a hard job, you may think - but this font has 8 different versions of each letter! That's 26 lowercase glyphs and 26 uppercase glyphs...8 times! That's more than 400 glyphs! And on top of that comes numbers and punctuation! Go crazy with Gutter Pigeon! Actually, that is not very hard, because the font automatically cycles through the 8 different versions of each letter while you type! Upper- and lowercase in a wild mix!

Mystical Woods is a script and caps font duo. I went back to the basics for this one -- ink and a brush on paper. I cleaned up the letters enough so that there are no jagged edges, but left enough of the character to keep that inky look -- those are the Rough fonts. Then I went back through again and cleaned the heck out of them, making every line and curve smooth for our cut-crafting friends -- those are the Smooth fonts. Since these two fonts were written together with the same tools and style, you can also mix the script letters in with the caps letters! Each font comes with a full set of standard characters and punctuation, as well as over 300 extended Latin characters for language support. And the script fonts also have 45 double-letter ligatures!

I want to create a font, which is very elegant. So I made Danizatti Script, a kind of classic decorative script with a modern twist. This is a display font intended for vintage logos, fashion labels, custom card headers, badges, food packaging designs, especially wine labels. Actually a lot of great style was consumed when creating this type :) there are 300 fancy letter and punctuation glyphs. I also offer a number of viable stylistic alternatives for multiple letters. NOTE, that you will get full access to font options only in Open Type smart applications like InDesign or Illustrator. You can find more about how to access OpenType features in Adobe Apps here: http://fontfeed.com/archives/opentype-in-adobe-creative-suite-the-raiders-of-the-lost-glyphs-pt_1/ Check out my other elegant script fonts at the my frofile

At this time I found the Album of monograms – a guide for doing handicrafts in families and educational institutions. It was published in St. Petersburg in 18ХХ. Finally, I found an authentic English style monograms set. These monograms are characterized thin swirled lines and lush foliage patterns. I manually redesigned and vectorized two sets of alphabets (narrow and wide) and happy to introduce you Marriage Monograms font. You’ll get the set includes Wide and Narrow capitals, so you can make your own monogram, by combining letters you want. +SVG file as well. Please note, you should use graphic applications such as Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop, but not Microsoft Word. All you need is place the Narrow one on top of the Wide one. Please feel free to request any help you need: kaer.pro@gmail.com All the best, Roman.

Graffiti Classic is a graffiti font that blends the improvisational urban quality of graffiti with the smoothness and regularity of a typeface. Growing up in Brooklyn, graffiti appeared to me as an explosion of expression and color in a sea of concrete. Inspired, I became a graffiti artist and practiced in both notebooks and subway tunnels. While I moved on to somewhat more traditional art forms in future years, with Graffiti Classic I pay homage to my artistic roots in a calligraphy marker/tag font. Like my other fonts, the entire Graffiti Classic font is spaced letter to individual letter so that the spacing will work smoothly, in spite of the expressiveness and irregularity of the forms. The Graffiti Classic family also includes an ornaments font, “Taglets,” which has clouds, underlines, arrows, crowns, halos and more to add flavor to your designs.

Anadolu was inspired by the distinct style of sign lettering in rural Turkey, and refined based on sign lettering in Hungary. Shown here are samples in Turkish and Hungarian, as well as Finnish and Estonian, two other languages in the Finno-Ugric language group with Hungarian. The slight curve at the tops of ascenders and bottoms of descenders is inspired by the linguistic process of "vowel harmony" in Turkish and Hungarian. Anadolu is the Turkish name for Anatolia, the peninsula where Turkey lies. The name recalls another sans-serif typeface named for its country of origin. The tittle on the i is reimagined as a diacritic, and the dotless ı is reimagined as the basic, prototypical i. Too many typefaces treat diacritics as afterthoughts. Since diacritics are integral to the languages that inspired Anadolu, they were designed as core components of the typeface.

If you'd like to scream, but you have no self esteem, or you'd love to start a fight, but you're scared of the night, I made this font for you all, whether you're short or tall. Monden is wide, gentle and fun, but it wasn't born under the Sun, it was my intention to make it unique, I surely hope I didn't make some freak, it looks a bit classical, in moments maybe here and there radical, but it surely is really graphical with a dose of something magical. Want a logo, poster or any other design, but you'd rather cry and then run, even this description sounds lousy, at least it isn't so drowsy, so meet Monden family from our hood and keep your spirit in good mood, and do the things on any way you think they should.

Strait passages second part… I tried in this fifth (that's why she took the name "Pentathlon Pro”) consecutive font family to give her a character style with again a strait way of writing. Walking on the same considerations as the previous series (Khamai, Aeolus, Corset & Artios) I tried to give some sense of diversity for the strait passages of character: those fourteen style are the result. And in this family, the “Bold” with "Inlier" and “Bold Italic” with "Inlier Italic” engage in the same way as did the “Layered font families” in the previous series. Also I added a design statement for the twelve zodiac signs, only presented in the Bold, Inlier, Bold Italic and Inlier Italic style. This series is composed of fourteen styles with 628 glyphs each, with true italics and supports Latin, Greek and Cyrillic.

Copperplate was the classic nineteenth century engravers typeface, consisting of capitals and small caps only. Among others (for example Deberny & Peignot) F. W. Goudy's cut for ATF around 1901 is probably the most widely known. Copperplate typefaces are traditionally used for business cards and all that "serious" stuff. My Copperplate Classic is a completely new design, based on some old samples. To make it look more up-to-date and elegant, I gave it some extra swings here and there. The old fonts were all designed with clogging corners or points that can break off in the minds of its designers. Today we do not have those problems any longer, so I could give my Copperplate Classic real sharp pointed serifs. To give you more choice I now added this medium cut in three variations, medium, sans and rounded! Enjoy! Gert Wiescher

Copperplate was the classic nineteenth century engraver's typeface, consisting of capitals and small caps only. Among others (for example Deberny & Peignot) F. W. Goudy's cut for ATF around 1901 is probably the most widely known. Copperplate typefaces are traditionally used for business cards and all that "serious" stuff. My Copperplate Classic is a completely new design, based on some old samples. To make it look more up-to-date and elegant, I gave it some extra swings here and there. The old fonts were all designed with clogging corners or points that can break off in the minds of its designers. Today we do not have those problems any longer, so I could give my Copperplate Classic real sharp pointed serifs. To give you more choice I now added this light cut in three variations, light, sans and rounded! Enjoy! Gert Wiescher

Have you got a dream? I dream of visiting Peterhof. The palace and park ensemble with beautiful architecture, sculptures, and fountains. It is no less beautiful on the inside than on the outside. Huge halls, windows, columns, paintings. Everything is very refined, elegant, and beautiful. Looking at the photos, I enjoy and admire the views. They inspired me to create the "Peterhof" typeface. Elongated letters echo with tall columns and fountains. Serifs and playful glyph corners add grace to the font. It turned out to be refined, aristocratic, and at the same time mysterious and effective. I have created a whole family of "Peterhof" fonts from regular to bold italics for every taste and for every task. The "Peterhof" font will look great in headlines, advertising signs, posters, magazine pages, and prints. It can serve as the main focus of your compositions.

1st Ave is the most experimental of my typefaces. I took a picture of a metal and neon sign in the East Village of New York City. These signs are slowly being replaced by LED and LCD displays, but if you look hard, you can still find quite a few in the city. The signs give a mid 20th century feel to the city. To design 1st Ave, I took a picture of the sign, scanned it and increased the contrast in Photoshop so that the photographic forms became line art. There weren't enough letterforms in the sign to create the whole alphabet, so I cut up the strokes and collaged them back together to finish the entire alphabet. Important Note: 1st Ave is an experimental typeface and is not compatible with certain software such as Microsoft Word.

Paradise Lost is a 1667 poem by John Milton which mostly concerns the Biblical story of the Fall of Man, Eve's temptation by the devil and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden. It's quite a hefty read, as the poem consists of ten books with over 10.000 lines of verse. Needless to say, I didn't read it all. But, it did give me inspiration for a font, which I called Paradise Lost. It's a good name, even though there is nothing Biblical about this font. Paradise Lost was created (pun intended) using a broken bamboo satay skewer and Chinese ink. It is all caps, but upper and lower case differ and like to mingle. I also included several ligatures for double lower case letters (aa, ee, jj, kk, etc.). Paradise Lost comes with an eternity of diacritics.

Larks' Tongues in Aspic is the fifth studio album (released in 1973) by the English progressive rock group King Crimson. I have always liked this name, as it reminded me of old stories in which witches threw all kinds of weird ingredients (larks’ tongues, bat wings and petrified dragon dung) into a big cauldron. When I created this font, it looked like the writing in an old book of spells, so I just had to call it Larks’ Tongues. Larks’ Tongues is a very lively headline font which would look good on (children’s) book covers, posters and product packaging. So, if you are about to write a book about witches, want to throw a halloween party or want to market your Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, then by all means, use this font! Comes with a magical amount of diacritics.

I love markets, especially the farmer’s markets with fresh produce and home made cheese. Too bad I need to travel a long way to get to one, as there is only a ‘regular’ market in my hometown - you know, with cheap duvets, ‘local’ fruit like bananas and a guy selling books about the end of times. I thought it would be great to create a font family you could actually use on a market. Hence Market Square. Market Square consists of 4 different fonts (each with its own Italic style), ranging from a fat marker font to a thin, squarish font. Each of them oozes freshness and authenticity and they were designed to complement each other. The cherry on top is the cute doodle font, loaded with fresh produce and seafood - just like you’d see on a Market Square.

Roadbrush was inspired by the mid-20th-century hand lettering of Albert Eckhardt, Jr., that I found in a 1950’s sign painting book. Roadbrush is a retro brush-style script that I re-designed and completely re-mastered. Roadbrush is a powerful font that can be used for logotype, packaging, posters, T-shirts, signage & design projects with a retro & vintage feel. Roadbrush comes with four styles that contain all upper and lower case characters, punctuation, numerals and mathematical operators, as well as all accented characters.

Introducing my new fingerprint typeface OldStamp. In addition to the Regular style, I added two more color styles. Typeface for casino labels, nightlife headlines, bright posters, detective cards, biometric access etc. What's included? * Regular, Violet and Green styles * Only uppercase * Numbers * Symbols * Punctuation I hope you enjoy this font. Follow my shop to receive updates of products and the very hottest news! If you have any question or issue, please contact me: kaer.pro@gmail.com Please request to add additional characters and glyphs if you need! Thank you!

I have seen my share of badly stuffed animals. Most of them via pictures, but also on vacations here and there. They all had this really bad handcraft vibe, but at the same time some really ordinary and kind of cute looks. I did my best to capture this look and feeling in my Badly Stuffed Animal font: clumsy letters made with a blobbly pen, with naive and irregular lines - and the conclusion is something super useful for a project that needs an organic handmade look!

For Vega antikva, too, 16th and 17th century typefaces stood models. I made a free interpretation of them, with a nice result, if I am allowed to express myself. Vega antikva makes a beautiful impression in books, but even as a web typeface it behaves well. The name Vega can be traced down to a constellation, a mathematician, a writer, a movie character, or a research ship, as you like. Now there is a typeface with that name, too. Vega antikva was released in 1994.