Peter Schnorr was a German artist/illustrator of Art Nouveau period (called Jugendstil in Germany and Austria). He was quite adept at calligraphy and did a variety of commercial work, including business signs. He designed at least four different alphabets and collaborated with Bruce Rogers on advertising work and title page designs for books. One of their clients was the publishing house of Houghton Mifflin. I have not been able to discover anything else about him, but I suspect he might be the grandson of the Bavarian artist Jules Schnorr von Carolsfeld, who was once commissioned to do a mural by Ludwig II of Bavaria (whose famous castle was copied by Disneyland). Schnorr did not give individual names to his fonts. Where there is no historical name, we like to follow the tradition initiated by Bauer and name fonts after their designer, with a descriptive adjective in the designer’s native language. Gestreckt is German for stretched or elongated. An interesting deign detail of this typeface is the cross bar of the “T” --it is NOT symetrical. The right hand side extends only 88% as far as the left hand side (a ratio of 9:8). I presume this was done for a more pleasing letter fit. Today Schnorr’s design is frequently offered under the name “Ambrosia.” However. close inspection will usually reveal that the serifs have been treated differently. I believe our font has a greater fidelity to the original design. Please also compare the design of the various auxiliary characters to those in other fonts. Often they are either borrowed from an inappropriate font of a different period or are missing altogether. We make every effort to design characters that are in keeping with the overall design and spirit of the typeface. For example, see the superscript Registered Trademark symbol (0174) and the Double s (0223). I think both are quite successful. Schnorr Gestreckt ML represents a major extension of the original release. In addition to the standard 1252 Western Europe Code Page with character slots up to decimal position 255, there are glyphs for the 1250 Central Europe, the 1252 Turkish and the 1257 Baltic Code Pages. There are also two alternate letter forms, one ornament and seven ligatures with Unicode codepoints (Private Use Area) and OpenType aalt, ornm & liga GSUB layout features. There are a total of 318 glyphs and 351 kerning pairs. Please note that some older applications may only be able to access the Western Europe character set (approximately 221 glyphs). This release also incorporates a redesign of several glyphs: the comma, quotes, acute accent, and grave accent.

Here I am, once again digging up 60-year sign lettering and trying to reconcile it with the typography of my own time. The truth is I've had this particular Alf Becker alphabet in my sights for a few years now. But in the typical way chaos shuffles the days, Buffet Script and Whomp won the battle for my attentions way back when, then Storefront beat the odds by a nose a couple of years ago. Nevertheless, revisiting Alf Becker’s work is always a breath of fresh air for me, not to mention the ego boost I get from confirming that I can still hack my way through the challenges, which is something I think people ask themselves about more often as they get older. You can never tell what may influence your work, or in this case remind you to dig it out of dust drawers and finally mould it into one of your own experiences. On my recent visits to the States and Canada, I noticed that quite a few high-end steak houses try their best to recreate an urban American 1930s atmosphere. This is quite evident in their menus, wall art, lighting, music, and so on. The ambience says your money is well spent here, because your food was originally choice-cut by a butcher who wears a suit, cooked by a chef who may be your neighbour 20 minutes from downtown, and delivered by a waitress who can do the Charleston when the lights dim and who just wouldn't mind laughing with you over drinks at the bar later. So Steak is just that, a face for menus and wall art in those places that see themselves in the kind of jazzy, noirish world where one-liners rule and exclamation points are part of a foreign language. As is usual with my lettering-inspired faces, there is very little left of the original Alf Becker alphabet. Of course, the challenges present in bringing typographic functionality to what is essentially pure hand lettering gives the spirit of the original art a hell of a rollercoaster ride. But I think that spirit survived the adventure, and may in fact be even somewhat magnified here. This font is over 850 glyphs. It’s loaded with ligatures, swashes, ending forms, alternates, ascender and descender variations, and extended Latin language support. Steak comes in 3 versions. According to your taste you can choose Barbecue, Braised or Smoked. It’s up to you!

Phinney Jenson ML is a font with deep historical roots firmly planted in the fertile soil of the Italian Renaissance. Twenty years after Lorenzo Ghiberti finished his famous East Doors, the Gates of Paradise, of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence and about fifteen years before Sandro Botticelli painted his “Birth of Venus,” a French printer by the name of Nicolas Jenson set up a small print shop in the powerful city-state of Venice. The fifteenth century marked the end of the plague and the rise of Venetian power, as the merchants of Venice controlled the lucrative trade of the eastern Mediterranean and sent their ships as far as London and even the Baltic. In 1470, Jenson introduced his Roman type with the printing of De Praeparatio Evangelica by Eusebuis. He continued to use his type for over 150 editions until he died in 1480. In 1890 a leader of the Arts & Crafts movement in England named William Morris founded Kelmscott Press. He was an admirer of Jenson’s Roman and drew his own somewhat darker version called GOLDEN, which he used for the hand-printing of limited editions on homemade paper, initiating the revival of fine printing in England. Morris' efforts came to the attention of Joseph Warren Phinney, manager of the Dickinson Type Foundry of Boston. Phinney requested permission to issue a commercial version, but Morris was philosophically opposed and flatly refused. So Phinney designed a commercial variation of Golden type and released it in 1893 as Jenson Oldstyle. Phinney Jenson is our version of Phinney’s version of Morris' version of Nicolas Jenson’s Roman. We selected a view of the Piazza San Marco in Venice for our gallery illustration of Phinney Jenson ML because most of the principal buildings on the Piazza were already standing when Jenson arrived in Vienna in 1470. The original Campanile was completed in 1173 (the 1912 replacement is partially visible on the left). The Basilica di San Marco was substantially complete by 1300. The Doge’s Palace (not in the photo, but next to the Basilica) was substantially complete by 1450. Even the Torre dell'Orologio (Clock Tower) may have been completed by 1470—certainly by 1500. Phinney Jenson ML has a "rough-and-ready" strength, suitable for headlines and short blocks of text. We have sought to preserve some of the crudeness of the nineteenth-century original. For comparison, see the more refined Centaur, Bruce Rogers's interpretation of Jenson Roman. Phinney Jenson ML has a strong presence that will help your documents stand out from the Times New Roman blizzard that threatens to cover us all. Phinney Jenson ML Features: 1. Glyphs for the 1252 Western Europe, 1250 Central Europe, the 1252 Turkish and the 1257 Baltic Code Pages. Accented glyphs for Cornish and Old Gaelic. Total of 393 glyphs. 400 kerning pairs. 2. OpenType GSUB layout features: onum, pnum, salt, liga, dlig, hisy and ornm. 3. Tabular (std), proportional (opt) & old-style numbers (opt). 5. CcNnOoSsZz-kreska available (salt).

Meet Ollie, a casual signage script whose friendly, bouncy exterior belies a heart of sophisticated OpenType programming. This font is designed to make the most of OpenType savvy applications, and as such is recommended for professional design use. Or to put it another way: Make sure that contextual alternates and ligatures are always turned on! Ollie includes about 900 glyphs, many of which are automagical substitutions to keep the text flowing smoothly, and to pseudo-randomly pick different glyphs to avoid repetition. With contextual alternates turned on (as they should be by default), most lowercase letters will alternate between at least two different forms. The powerful OpenType programming makes the font itself ‘look back’ (up to eight characters) on previously used letters; typing “banana” will give you three different a’s and two different n’s (the last a is a special ‘end form’ character). The calt feature controls many other ‘special effects’ which all add together to give a smooth-flowing, hand-lettered look. These effects include start and end forms (and indeed, ‘loner’ forms) of many letters, which are automatically substituted in at beginnings or ends of words, or when the previous or next letter doesn't connect. Another special feature tests to see if there is room for the crossbar of t (or tt ligature) to extend further over the previous or next letter, or both, as is often the case. The last main effect of the calt feature is to substitute certain letters typed before any ‘e’ character, to make for a more natural connection (see the pe combination in ‘Eclectotype’ in the first poster). Ligatures should be on by default, for a much nicer looking tt combination, and a few others besides. The swash feature should be used sparingly (one glyph at a time, really) to apply a more extravagant look to g,j and y in the lower case, and quite a few of the upper case too. Oldstyle figures are included, as well as the lining defaults. Now to delve into the stylistic alternates... These are all included in the salt feature, or for uses of applications that support them, separated into stylistic sets thus: ss01 - (with swash feature on) L and G swashes get even swashier. ss02 - standard s changes to a connected script s form. ss03 - r takes on a script form. ss04 - z also gets a scriptier look. [the previous three sets also change any versions of s, r or z with diacritics] ss05 - a useful underline function. When enabled, typing two or more underscores will extend a cool underline under the previous letters. More underscores = longer underline. ss06 - the Polish script lslash changes to its more standard form. ss07 - E, S and B change to a more top-heavy alternate form. ss08 - An alternate form for A characters. ss09 - Alterative rounder forms of M and N. ss10 - An alternate ampersand. That about wraps up the features. Now all that’s left is for you to license the font and get experimenting!

TT Marxiana useful links: Specimen | History of creation | Graphic presentation | Customization options Please note! If you need OTF versions of the fonts, just email us at commercial@typetype.org About TT Marxiana: TT Marxiana is a project to reconstruct a set of pre-revolutionary fonts that were used in the layout of the "Niva" magazine, published by the St. Petersburg publishing house A.F. Marx. In our project, we decided to focus on a specific set of fonts that were used in the preparation and printing of the "Niva" magazine in 1887, namely its Antiqua and Italic, Grotesque and Elzevir. As part of the TT Marxiana project, we sought to adhere to strict historicity and maintain maximum proximity to the paper source. We tried to avoid any “modernization” of fonts, unless of course we consider this to be kerning work, the introduction of OpenType features and creation of manual hinting. As a result, with the TT Marxiana font family, a modern designer gets a full-fledged and functional set of different fonts, which allows using modern methods and using modern software to create, for example, a magazine in a design typical of the late 19th century. The TT Marxiana project started in the late summer of 2018 and from the very beginning went beyond the traditional projects of TypeType because of the importance of preserving the historical identity. Since up to this point, we had never before reconstructed the font from historical paper sources and with such a level of elaboration and attention to detail, it took us two years to implement this project. You can read more about all stages of the project in our blog, and here we will briefly talk about the result. As it turned out, drawing a font following the scanned pages of a century-old magazine is a very difficult task. In fact, such a font reconstruction very much resembles archaeological excavations or solving a complex cipher, and all these efforts are needed only in order to finally understand what steps need to be taken so that the resulting font is not just an antiqua, but the specific and accurate antiqua from "Niva" magazine. In addition, due to the specifics of printing, same characters in the old magazine setting looked completely different, which greatly complicated the task. In one place, there was less ink than needed, and the letter in the reference was not well-printed and thin, in some other place there was more ink and the letter had flooded. An important task was to preserve and convey this feeling of typographic printing, but at the same time it was important to identify the common logic and character of the dot gains so that the font would form a harmonious, single, but at the same time lively picture. Since the "Niva" magazine was historically published in Russian, the magazine had no shortage of references for the reconstruction of Cyrillic characters, but there were not many Latin letters in the magazine at all. In addition, the paper source lacked a part of punctuation, diacritics, there were no currency signs nor ligatures at all—we developed all these characters based on font catalogs of the 19–20 centuries, trying to reflect characteristic details from the main character composition to the max. So, for example, the Germandbls character, which is not in the original "Niva" set, we first found in one of the font catalogs, but still significantly redesigned it. We decided that in such a voluminous project, only graphic similarities with the original source are not enough and we came up with a feature that can be used to exchange modern Russian spelling for pre-revolutionary spelling. When this feature is turned on, yat and yer appear in the necessary places (i, ѣ, b, ѳ and ѵ), the endings of the words change, and so appears a complete sensation of the historical text. This feature works in all fonts of the TT Marxiana font family. TT Marxiana Antiqua is a scotch style serif, the drawing of which carefully preserved some of the artifacts obtained by printing, namely dot gain, a slight deformation of the letters and other visual nuances. TT Marxiana Antiqua has an interesting stylistic set that imitates the old setting and in which some of the signs are made with deliberate sticking or roughness. Using this set will provide an opportunity to further simulate the setting of that great time. TT Marxiana Grotesque is a rather thick and bold old grotesk. Its drawing also maximally preserved the defects obtained during printing and characteristic of its paper reference. In addition to pre-revolutionary spelling, TT Marxiana Grotesque has a decorative set with an inversion. This is a set of uppercase characters, numbers and punctuation, which allows you to type inverse headers, i.e. print white on black. As a result of using this set, you get the text against black bars—this way of displaying was very characteristic for print advertising at the turn of the century. In addition, about 30 decorative indicator stubs were drawn for this set: arrows, hands, clubs, etc. TT Marxiana Elzevir is a title or header font and is a compilation of monastic Elzevir that were actively used in the "Niva" magazine for all its prints. Unlike the antiqua, TT Marxiana Elzevir has sharper forms, and the influence of deformations from typographic printing is not as noticeable in the forms of its signs. This is primarily due to the specifics of its drawing and the fact that it was usually used as a heading font and was printed in large sizes. The height of the lowercase and uppercase characters of Elsevier is the same as the heights of the antiqua, but the font is more contrasting and lighter, it has a lot of white and, unlike the antiqua and the grotesque, there are a lot of sharp corners. An exclusive feature of the TT Marxiana Elzevir is an alternative set of uppercase characters with swash. • TT Marxiana Antiqua consist of 625 glyphs each and and it has 23 OpenType features, such as: aalt, ccmp, locl, subs, sinf, sups, numr, dnom, frac, ordn, lnum, pnum, tnum, onum, salt, calt, liga, ss01, ss02, ss03, ss04, ss05, case. • TT Marxiana Antiqua Italic consist of 586 glyphs each and and it has 22 OpenType features, such as: aalt, ccmp, locl, subs, sinf, sups, numr, dnom, frac, ordn, lnum, pnum, tnum, onum, salt, calt, liga, ss01, ss02, ss03, ss04, case. • TT Marxiana Grotesque consists of 708 glyphs and it has 22 OT features, such as: aalt, ccmp, locl, subs, sinf, sups, numr, dnom, frac, ordn, lnum, pnum, tnum, onum, salt, calt, liga, ss01, ss02, ss03, ss04, case. • TT Marxiana Elzevir consists of 780 glyphs and it has 21 OT features, such as: aalt, ccmp, locl, ordn, frac, tnum, onum, lnum, pnum, calt, ss01, ss02, ss03, ss04, ss05, ss06, salt, c2sc, smcp, case, liga. FOLLOW US: Instagram | Facebook | Website TT Marxiana language support: Acehnese, Afar, Albanian, Alsatian, Aragonese, Asu, Aymara, Banjar, Basque, Belarusian (cyr), Bemba, Bena, Betawi, Bislama, Boholano, Bosnian (cyr), Breton, Bulgarian (cyr), Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chiga, Cornish, Corsican, Cree, Danish, Dutch, Embu, English, Erzya, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Gaelic, Galician, German, Gusii, Haitian Creole, Hiri Motu, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Interlingua, Irish, Italian, Javanese, Judaeo-Spanish, Kabuverdianu, Kalenjin, Karachay-Balkar (cyr), Kashubian, Khasi, Khvarshi, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kongo, Kumyk, Ladin, Leonese, Luganda, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Macedonian, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Malay, Manx, Mauritian Creole, Minangkabau, Montenegrin (cyr), Mordvin-moksha, Morisyen, Nauruan, Ndebele, Nias, Nogai, Norwegian, Nyankole, Occitan, Oromo, Palauan, Polish, Portuguese, Rheto-Romance, Rohingya, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Russian, Rusyn, Rwa, Samburu, Sango, Sangu, Scots, Sena, Serbian (cyr), Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Shona, Soga, Somali, Sotho, Spanish, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Swiss German, Tagalog, Taita, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tsonga, Tswana, Ukrainian, Uyghur, Valencian, Volapük, Võro, Vunjo, Walloon, Xhosa, Zulu.

A sturdy workhorse with the grace of a gazelle, the FF Pastoral typeface family marries pure craftsmanship with rapturous excesses of form. With his fifteenth release under the FontFont brand, prolific French designer Xavier Dupré has filled a typographic toolbox with plentiful options ranging from a tender, feathery Thin to a robust, healthy Black. At a glance, FF Pastoral appears deceptively simple, particularly in the middle weights. That surface serenity is intentional and allows for easy reading and quick comprehension of short blocks of copy. Upon closer inspection, FF Pastoral is complex and nuanced, carrying a balanced tension in its forms. This plays particularly well in magazine spreads and corporate logos, where uniqueness is a virtue. In creating his latest design, Dupré drew inspiration from a tasteful mix of references, combining diverse elements with a deft hand. While its letter shapes were informed by humanist-geometric hybrid Gill Sans, FF Pastoral’s proportions have been optimized for contemporary typography. Slightly condensed but generously spaced, FF Pastoral features a tall x-height, open counters, and subtle, sprightly italics slanted at just 5°. Proportional oldstyle figures are the default in the family, with tabular and lining numbers and fractions accessible through OpenType features. Elegant details evocative of calligraphy judiciously pepper the FF Pastoral glyph set. The ‘e’ bears an oblique crossbar, while the right leg of the ‘K’ and the ‘R’ are insouciantly curved in both the upright and italic variants. Further flourishes appear throughout the italics, notably in the ‘T’ and the ‘Z’, the gloriously looped tail of the ‘G’, and an extraordinary ampersand. Sharp-eyed fans of Dupré’s work may feel like they’re in familiar territory, and they would be right. An early version of FF Pastoral sprang to life in 2017 as Malis, a family in four weights on the heavier side of the spectrum. Over time, Dupré refined his original design, expanding it with four lighter styles and including true italics for all. The lightest weights are ethereal, with exquisitely delicate strokes drawing the eye in and across a line of type. The most substantial styles are tremendous in their power, allowing text to make a deep impression in print or on screen. Fully fleshed out, FF Pastoral works sublimely in a vast array of text and display settings. Dupré sees his latest FontFont offering as a ‘cultural’ typeface, perfect for the pages of an oversized coffee-table book or business communications where warmth and informality will win the day. Born in Aubenas, France (1977), Xavier Dupré is a gifted user of type as well as an award-winning type designer and lettering artist. After training in graphic design in Paris, Dupré studied calligraphy and typography at the Scriptorium de Toulouse. Since releasing FF Parango in 2001, Dupré has published such FontFont classics as the FF Absara and FF Sanuk superfamilies, FF Megano, FF Tartine, and FF Yoga. A designer of Khmer fonts as well as Latin typefaces, Dupré splits his time between Europe and Asia.

Iza W and Intellecta Design are proud to announce Invitation Script, a modern and clean revival of the classic work of the Portuguese master penman Manuel de Andrade de Figueiredo, whose work can be seen in “Nova Escola para aprender a ler, escrever, e contar (...)'' (1722). Invitation Script is the third script superfamily published by Intellecta Design, after Penabico and Van den Velde Script. Invitation Script has original letters designed by Iza W. Creative direction and core programming were provided by Paulo W. Chyrllene K assisted with some work on unusual and archaic styles, resulting in a special font - Invitation Script Archaic (soon available). Invitation started out from Andrade’s script style and evolved into a voluptuous script font family. The result is a typeface ideal for beautiful headings, signatures, art work typography, titles and short pieces of hand-lettered text. Invitation family includes two multi-table Opentype fonts, three supplementary fonts for ornaments and fleurons, and the Archaic font with some of the Andrade’s original characters. Embedded in the regular fonts are additional sets of letters. Over 40 variations are available for certain letters via the Special Sets Opentype table. The two regular versions of Invitation Script contains the following: (i) An extensive set of ligatures providing letterform variations that make eye-popping designs or simulate real handwriting. These are accessible via contextual alternates and other open-type features. (ii) Many stylistic alternates for each letter (upper and lowercase, accessed via the glyph palette, encoded in the ranges of the Special Set Opentype feature). Since there are over 1100 glyphs in each font, we suggest using the glyph palette. (iii) A set of ornaments and fleurons accessed with the glyph palette or using the Ornaments feature. Additional ornaments can be found in the two Invitation Script Ornaments fonts. (iv) Initial and final letters with artistic variations accessible using the initial and final form open-type features. (v) Major kerning work: over 6000 kerning pairs, hand-set to avoid collisions and to create intricate combinations of letters, using swashes and other resources. These powerful features are all accessible in InDesign, Illustrator, QuarkXpress and similar software. We recommend exploring the magic of this font using the glyph palette. Our sample illustrations and PDF brochures showcase the power and pizzazz of this calligraphic script. Let your imagination go wild and use Invitation Script in ways that Andrade could not have foreseen. In non-OpenType-savvy applications, Invitation Script is still an exceptionally beautiful calligraphic typeface that stands up to the competition. The regular fonts contains the complete Latin alphabet, including Central European, Vietnamese, Baltic and Turkish, with a full set of diacritics and punctuation marks. --- 1 FIGUEIREDO, Manuel de Andrade de, 1670-1735 Nova Escola para aprender a ler, escrever, e contar. Offerecida á Augusta Magestade do Senhor Dom Joaõ V. Rey de Portugal. Primeira parte / por Manoel de Andrade de Figueiredo, Mestre desta Arte nas cidades de Lisboa Occidental, e Oriental. - Lisboa Occidental: na Officina de Bernardo da Costa de Carvalho, Impressor do Serenissimo Senhor Infante, 1722. - [18], 156 p., 44 f. grav. a buril : il., ; 2º (31 cm)Engraved royal coat of arms supported by angels over the city of Lisbon, engraved portrait of the author (both of the foregoing by Bernard Picart), (12)ff., 156pp., engraved calligraphic section title, 44 engraved plates. Wood-engraved culs-de-lampe and lettrines. Sm. folio. “Andrade de Figueiredo was born in Espirito Santo, where his father was Governor of the ‘Capitania.’ The fine portrait is dated 1721 and is showing Figueiredo at the age of 48. He was an eminent calligrapher and a creator of the Portuguese handwriting until the reign of Don José I (ca. 1755). His work follows the style of the great Italian masters in its use of clubbed ascenders and descenders, and of Diaz Morante, the famous Spanish writing master, in its very elaborate show of command of hand. By his contemporaries, he was known as the ‘Morante portugues’” (Ekström). “Ce livre est un manuel, composé de quatre parties, destiné à apprendre à lire, à écrire, à conter ainsi que l’orthographe. Les planches comportent des examples d’écritures, d’alphabets et de textes ornés de remarquables traits de plume exécutés d’une main sûre et enjouée” (Jammes).

An American Scotch remixed in 27 fonts Mencken has twenty seven styles, divided into three widths, three optical sizes, romans and italics. Generally, optical size typeface families belong to a same common construction. It falls into the same category of type classification, while presenting different x-heights or contrasts. Mencken is unique because it is designed according to different axis and optical sizes. Firstly, Mencken Text is a low-contrast transitional typeface, designed on an oblique axis, asserting horizontal with featuring open counters. Its capitals follow Didots to better harmonize the rest of the family. On the other side of the spectrum, Mencken Head (and narrow variations) is designed on a vertical axis, high contrast, in a contemporary Didot style. The Mencken is therefore a typeface answering to different sorts of uses, whose design is different according to its uses: from oblique axis in small size to vertical axis in large sizes. Vertical proportions (x-height, capitals height, etc.) were calibrated to be compatible with many Typofonderie typeface families. Lucie Lacava and I followed the idea launched by Matthew Carter few years ago for some of his typefaces intended for publications. From Baltimore Sun’s project to Typofonderie’s Mencken It is a bespoke typeface for American newspaper The Baltimore Sun started at the end of 2004 which marks the beginning of this project. The story started with a simple email exchange with Lucie Lacava then in charge of redesigning the American East Coast newspaper. As usual, she was looking for new typeface options in order to distinguish the redesign that she had started. At the time of its implementation, a survey of the newspaper’s readers has revealed that its previous typeface, drawn in the mid-1990s, was unsatisfactory. The Mencken was well received, some reader responses was particularly enjoyable: “It’s easier to read with the new type even though the type is designed by a French.” Why it is called Mencken? The name Mencken is a tribute to H. L. Mencken’s journalistic contributions to The Sun. According to the London Daily Mail, Mencken ventured beyond the typewriter into the world of typography. Because he felt Americans did not recognize irony when they read it, he proposed the creation of a special typeface to be called Ironics, with the text slanting in the opposite direction from italic types, to indicate the author’s humour. Affirming his irreverence, the Mencken typeface does not offer these typographic gadgets. Henry Louis Mencken (1880 — 1956) was an American journalist, satirist, cultural critic and scholar of American English. Known as the “Sage of Baltimore”, he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the first half of the twentieth century. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians and contemporary movements. Creative Review Type Annual 2006 Tokyo TDC 2018

Multicolored Fonts Many years ago, when Xerox Corporation still had its own font department, I came to Los Angeles in 1985 to train the IKARUS program. One day Bill Kienzel, head of the Xerox font department at the time, said we should go to the Hollywood Hills together; he knew people there who were experimenting with multicolored fonts. After a little wandering through the winding streets of the many hills, we reached a somewhat overgrown, simple family house standing under trees. A group of very inspired designers were waiting for us there. They immediately showed us the works they created using photomechanical tricks. They were fascinating. The American colors and the whole look seemed noble and enchanting. The problem was that this process was very difficult to implement and required a lot of effort on individual letters. They dreamed of a colored font that could be used for normal typesetting. We thought back and forth about how to save the individually colored letters in a common font, but soon gave up because we didn't see a technical option. So this idea and the memory of the time in Hollywood lay dormant in the back of my mind for many years, until at the beginning of this year 2023 I received an order to produce an outline typeface and the story came back to me. Suddenly I knew how to solve the problem from back then: if only the areas that should have the same color in all letters were saved in their own separate fonts, they could be colored independently of each other and later placed on top of each other. I implemented this in the 5 fonts that are now available with the 3 variants “Outside”, “Middle” and “Inside”. Together with the background, 4 colors can be combined with each other. This method works in text programs such as Word or InDesign. In Photoshop or Illustrator, the individual surfaces can also be colored by converting them into paths if the additional “Complete” variants (which contain all 3 contours) are used. There is also a “Basic” variant that can be used to achieve special effects such as overlay, bleed, etc. The first 5 fonts in this series are all based on the principle of contouring. Anyone who claims that you don't need any special fonts because they can be created automatically from any font using common programs is wrong or is only telling only half the truth. Anyone who has ever dealt with this knows that many individual adjustments to the design are necessary after contouring. This has happened in the 5 fonts that are now available and have very different styles. The dream from back then has come true. The user can set any text, long or short, in multiple colors, freely design the color scheme and apply all the usual typographic settings. Volker Schnebel, November 2023

Developer-friendly The studio has developed a wide array of weights for FS Untitled – 12 in all, in roman and italic – with the intention of meeting every on-screen need. All recognisably part of a family, each weight brings a different edge or personality to headline or body copy. There’s more. Type on screen has a tendency to fill in or blow so for each weight, there’s the choice of two marginally different versions, allowing designers and developers to go up or down a touch in weight. They’re free to use the font at any size on any background colour without fear of causing optical obstacles. And to make life even easier for developers, the 12 weight pairs have each been designated with a number from 100 (Thin) to 750 (Bold), corresponding to the system used to denote font weight in CSS code. Selecting a weight is always light work. Easy on the pixels ‘It’s a digital-first world,’ says Jason Smith, ‘and I wanted to make something that was really functional for digital brands’. FS Untitled was made for modern screens. Its shapes and proportions, x-height and cap height were modelled around the pixel grids of even low-resolution displays. So there are no angles in the A, V and W, just gently curving strokes that fit, not fight, with the pixels, and reduce the dependency on font hinting. Forms are simplified and modular – there are no spurs on the r or d, for example – and the space between the dot of the i and its stem is larger than usual. The result is a clearer, more legible typeface – functional but with bags of character. Screen beginnings FS Untitled got its start on the box. Its roots lie in Fontsmith’s creation of the typeface for Channel 4’s rebrand in 2005: the classic, quirky, edgy C4 headline font, with its rounded square shapes (inspired by the classic cartoon TV shape of a squidgy rectangle), and a toned-down version for use in text, captions and content graphics. The studio has built on the characteristics that made the original face so pixel-friendly: its blend of almost-flat horizontals and verticals with just enough openness and curve at the corners to keep the font looking friendly. The curves of the o, c and e are classic Fontsmith – typical of the dedication its designers puts into sculpting letterforms. Look out for… FS Untitled wouldn’t be a Fontsmith typeface if it didn’t have its quirks, some warranted, some wanton. There’s the rounded junction at the base of the E, for example, and the strong, solid contours of the punctuation marks and numerals. Notice, too, the distinctive, open shape of the A, V, W, X and Y, created by strokes that start off straight before curving into their diagonal path. Some would call the look bow-legged; we’d call it big-hearted.

Developer-friendly The studio has developed a wide array of weights for FS Untitled – 12 in all, in roman and italic – with the intention of meeting every on-screen need. All recognisably part of a family, each weight brings a different edge or personality to headline or body copy. There’s more. Type on screen has a tendency to fill in or blow so for each weight, there’s the choice of two marginally different versions, allowing designers and developers to go up or down a touch in weight. They’re free to use the font at any size on any background colour without fear of causing optical obstacles. And to make life even easier for developers, the 12 weight pairs have each been designated with a number from 100 (Thin) to 750 (Bold), corresponding to the system used to denote font weight in CSS code. Selecting a weight is always light work. Easy on the pixels ‘It’s a digital-first world,’ says Jason Smith, ‘and I wanted to make something that was really functional for digital brands’. FS Untitled was made for modern screens. Its shapes and proportions, x-height and cap height were modelled around the pixel grids of even low-resolution displays. So there are no angles in the A, V and W, just gently curving strokes that fit, not fight, with the pixels, and reduce the dependency on font hinting. Forms are simplified and modular – there are no spurs on the r or d, for example – and the space between the dot of the i and its stem is larger than usual. The result is a clearer, more legible typeface – functional but with bags of character. Screen beginnings FS Untitled got its start on the box. Its roots lie in Fontsmith’s creation of the typeface for Channel 4’s rebrand in 2005: the classic, quirky, edgy C4 headline font, with its rounded square shapes (inspired by the classic cartoon TV shape of a squidgy rectangle), and a toned-down version for use in text, captions and content graphics. The studio has built on the characteristics that made the original face so pixel-friendly: its blend of almost-flat horizontals and verticals with just enough openness and curve at the corners to keep the font looking friendly. The curves of the o, c and e are classic Fontsmith – typical of the dedication its designers puts into sculpting letterforms. Look out for… FS Untitled wouldn’t be a Fontsmith typeface if it didn’t have its quirks, some warranted, some wanton. There’s the rounded junction at the base of the E, for example, and the strong, solid contours of the punctuation marks and numerals. Notice, too, the distinctive, open shape of the A, V, W, X and Y, created by strokes that start off straight before curving into their diagonal path. Some would call the look bow-legged; we’d call it big-hearted.