Futura is THE prototype of a geometric or constructed linear sans serif and the font most commonly font of its kind used to date. Futura, very much influenced by the Bauhaus movement in Germany, was designed in 1927 by Paul Renner. Although being around for almost 90 years, Futura seems eternally young and fresh which also explains its continuous popularity with designers and typographers. Futura simply means efficiency and functionality documented by both its many usages as corporate type (e.g. Volkswagen, formerly IKEA, Vuitton, Shell, formerly HP, SMA and many more) as well as in various famous film projects (e.g. Kubrick, Anderson etc.). Futura’s iconic status was probably established when it walked on the moon with the Apollo 11 crew in 1969. It was used for the lettering of the plaque that was left up there. Now, URW has expanded its range of Futura styles by Futura Round with 14 additional styles.

This family was inspired by the early Fraktur style font used circa 1530 by Jacob Otther, printer in Strasbourg (Alsace-France) for German language printed books. Although it is an early Fraktur pattern, it is easy to see the characteristic differences with the Schwabacher style (look at 1538 Schwabacher), like in the small d, o or y... and the capitals (look at the H, K, T...). Frequently, Schwabacher and Fraktur were used together in the same book : Fraktur style for the main and Schwabacher for marginalia and comments. This font contains standard ligatures and German historical ligatures (German double s, long s, ts...) and diacritics (special ummlaut "e superscript" and "∞" instead of dieresis with letters a, o and u,) naturally, we have added numerous letters lacking in the original to permit a contemporary use of the font.

It's 1984 and everything has sideburns. Shoulder-padded "dress for success" is in, with power suits for women, black and white layers for men, neon brights for the youngsters. Maggie's "enemy within" and "no society" speeches preface the arrival of shopping malls and corporate status symbols. The economy is a philosophy and accountants carry ambiguous but very sophisticated-sounding titles. Thousands of words and expressions are reduced to initials or monosyllabic sounds. Synthesizers are very refined and the music is very catchy. The Macintosh and MTV are making waves. Brands are lifestyles. "Yuppy," Yummy," "Bobo," "Dinky" and "Woopie" are standard consumer categories in advertising lingo. The Volkswagen identity, only 5 years old now, is all the rage in design. VAG Rundschrift, by all appearances a rounded and slightly condensed Futura, is everywhere. Tube design is king. Fast forward two dozen years. Replay, but bigger and much louder. Fab. Let's dance. Fab is Canada Type's tribute to the Eighties. It's a five-font unicase family that brings tube design into the 21st century. The main font is an all-in-one treatment of the shiny roundness that the 1980s were. Fab White is a tightly packed thick outline font that conveys luscious contentedness like nothing else. The Fab Trio package is very useful for layered and colorful design, with the Black style serving as a backdrop, the Bold style as the front forms, and the Fill style for inlining. Fab comes in all popular formats and contains support for Western, Central and Eastern European languages, as well as Baltic, Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish and Celtic/Welsh languages.