Zuzana Licko's goal for Fairplex was to create a text face which would achieve legibility by avoiding contrast, especially in the Book weight. As a result of its low contrast, the Fairplex Book weight is somewhat reminiscent of a sans serif, yet the slight serifs preserve the recognition of serif letterforms. When creating the accompanying weights, the challenge was to balance the contrast and stem weight with the serifs. To provide a comprehensive family, Licko wanted the boldest weight to be quite heavy. This meant that the "Black" weight would need more contrast than the Book weight in order to avoid clogging up. But harmonizing the serifs proved difficult. The initial serif treatments she tried didn't stand up to the robust character of the Black weight. Several months passed without much progress, and then one evening she attended a talk by Alastair Johnston on his book "Alphabets to Order," a survey of nineteenth century type specimens. Johnston pointed out that slab serifs (also known as "Egyptians") are really more of a variation on sans serifs than on serif designs. In other words, slab serif type is more akin to sans-serif type with serifs added on than it is to a version of serif type. This sparked the idea that the solution to her serif problem for Fairplex Black might be a slab serif treatment. After all, the Book weight already shared features of sans-serif types. Shortly after this came the idea to angle the serifs. This was suggested by her husband, and was probably conjured up from his years of subconscious assimilation of the S. F. Giants logo while watching baseball, and reinforced by a similar serif treatment in John Downer's recent Council typeface design. The angled serifs added visual interest to the otherwise austere slab serifs. The intermediate weights were then derived by interpolating the Book and Black, with the exception of several characters, such as the "n," which required specially designed features to avoid collisions of serifs, and to yield a pleasing weight balance. A range of weights was interpolated before deciding on the Medium and Bold weights.

Mencap When most of us go about everyday tasks, we take for granted the reading that’s involved, on instructions, labels and so on. For people with learning disabilities, reading is made much harder by certain fonts. FS Me is designed specifically to improve legibility for people with learning disabilities. The font was researched and developed with – and endorsed by – Mencap, the UK’s leading charity and voice for those with learning disabilities. Mencap receive a donation for each font license purchased. Every letter of FS Me was tested for its appeal and readability with a range of learning disability groups across the UK. Inclusive Fontsmith were determined to design a font that was accessible to those with learning disabilities without standing out as such – one that was inclusive of all readers. It should comply with accessibility guidelines and work best at 12pt, but still have a character of its own that was warm and approachable. “So much accessible design is done separately to the main body of brand work,” says Jason Smith. “We wanted to make a typeface that covered both brand tone and neutrality, and that could be used legitimately as a brand font as well as in accessible design.” Me, you, everyone FS Me is about design that doesn’t patronise. People with learning disabilities are often treated as inferior by childlike design. FS Me is designed for adults, not children – a beautifully-designed font for everyone. Its features include very subtle distinguishing elements of each letter to aid the reading and comprehension of texts, and tails, ascenders and descenders that have been extended for extra clarity. What the people said... Here is a sample of comments from the extensive research groups that helped to shape the letterforms of FS Me: “I want something round, clear and friendly.” “We like movement in the letters but don’t want anything childish.” “The ‘b’ and ‘d’ need to be different as they can be confused.” “I prefer the handwriting-style ‘a’.” “It’s important to have an accessible ‘a’ and ‘g’. Teachers sometimes complain that learners cannot read or understand the inaccessible ‘a’ and ‘g’.”

Mencap When most of us go about everyday tasks, we take for granted the reading that’s involved, on instructions, labels and so on. For people with learning disabilities, reading is made much harder by certain fonts. FS Me is designed specifically to improve legibility for people with learning disabilities. The font was researched and developed with – and endorsed by – Mencap, the UK’s leading charity and voice for those with learning disabilities. Mencap receive a donation for each font license purchased. Every letter of FS Me was tested for its appeal and readability with a range of learning disability groups across the UK. Inclusive Fontsmith were determined to design a font that was accessible to those with learning disabilities without standing out as such – one that was inclusive of all readers. It should comply with accessibility guidelines and work best at 12pt, but still have a character of its own that was warm and approachable. “So much accessible design is done separately to the main body of brand work,” says Jason Smith. “We wanted to make a typeface that covered both brand tone and neutrality, and that could be used legitimately as a brand font as well as in accessible design.” Me, you, everyone FS Me is about design that doesn’t patronise. People with learning disabilities are often treated as inferior by childlike design. FS Me is designed for adults, not children – a beautifully-designed font for everyone. Its features include very subtle distinguishing elements of each letter to aid the reading and comprehension of texts, and tails, ascenders and descenders that have been extended for extra clarity. What the people said... Here is a sample of comments from the extensive research groups that helped to shape the letterforms of FS Me: “I want something round, clear and friendly.” “We like movement in the letters but don’t want anything childish.” “The ‘b’ and ‘d’ need to be different as they can be confused.” “I prefer the handwriting-style ‘a’.” “It’s important to have an accessible ‘a’ and ‘g’. Teachers sometimes complain that learners cannot read or understand the inaccessible ‘a’ and ‘g’.”

With the clear, simple elegance of its sans serif forms and the warmly human touches of its tapering stems, the Optima family has proved popular around the world. In 2002, when it was finally possible to produce digital alphabets without technical limitations and compromises, and more than fifty years after the first sketches, an expansion and redesign of the Optima family was completed and released as Optima nova. Hermann Zapf and Japanese type designer, Akira Kobayashi, collaborated on the project, which included re-working of the existing weights and the addition of several new weights: small caps, old style figures, light, heavy, and condensed. The original Optima was never manufactured with a real italic, only an oblique version of the roman. Optima nova has a complete range of beautifully designed real italics; the new italic forms, of the e, f and g are especially notable. The titling face includes capital letters with special and unusual letter combinations and ligatures, making it an excellent choice for headlines, logos and advertising purposes. Optima continues to be an all-purpose typeface; and Optima nova works for just about anything from book text to signage. Optima Nova® font field guide including best practices, font pairings and alternatives.

Vox Round is the softer version of the Vox family. The original brief for Vox was a extensive monoline typeface that can be both precise and friendly, yet contain enough choice of seamlessly interchangeable variants for the user to be able to completely transform the personality of the typeface depending on the application. Basically, a sans serif with applications that range from clean and transparent information relay to sleek and angular branding. When the first version of Vox was released in 2007, it became an instant hit with interface designers, product packagers, sports channels, transport engineers and electronics manufacturers. This new version (2013) is the expanded treatment, which is even more dedicated to the original idea of abundant application flexibility. The family was expanded to five weights and two widths, with corresponding italics, for a total of 20 fonts. Each font contains 1240 glyphs. Localization includes Cyrillic and Greek, as well as extended Latin language support. Built-in OpenType features include small caps, caps to small caps, four completely interchangeable sytlistic alternates sets, automatic fractions, six types of figures, ordinals, and meticulous class-based kerning. This kind of typeface malleability is not an easy thing to come by these days.

By the 1990s, the availability of font creation software opened the door to an explosion of creativity, experimentation and exploration into the world of digital typography by amateur and professional alike. The undisputed king of the freeware fonts was Ray Larabie through his Larabie Fonts website. It seemed at the time that Ray’s output was endless, and he amassed dozens upon dozens of fonts that ranged from the ridiculous to the sublime. In fact, Ray was the driving force of encouragement and a behind-the-scenes “mentor” who helped Jeff Levine Fonts get underway in January of 2006. As Larabie’s focus changed to higher-quality commercial type design with the launch of Typodermic, Inc., many of his “less than perfect” font experiments were withdrawn and shelved. Ray eventually turned those lost (and sometimes questionable) typefaces into a bundled zip archive released into the public domain through Creative Commons. One particular design “Boron” (circa 1996) featured computer-oriented lettering as if etched onto a circuit board. Running with this idea, and with Ray's approval, the electronic elements were stripped away, the characters cleaned up and modified, and the font reworked in Retro Checkbook JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Momoiro is a feminine typeface family, designed for editorial use. "The first case in which appeared a fashion content in a magazine was in 1672 in the magazine Le Mercure Galant, which was a magazine of entertainment and varied content, including fashion. But the first illustrated and specialized magazine was Le Journal Des Dammes Et Des Modes, created in 1797. "(Fashion Trends, 2011). On the basis of this historical period, the creation of typography has characteristics of a Baroque type. "In this category we mainly include the types created in the Netherlands during the seventeenth century and whose protagonists are the punch makers Reinhard Voskens and Christoffel Van Dijck. Baroque typography stands out for its accentuated play of irregular axes and contrasts that permeate the text of great vividness. " Therefore it has contrast in the thick and thin strokes, Roman serifs, humanistic axis. With this typography, we are not looking for a re-reading of the baroque, but rather a current typeface with humanistic characteristics of the handwriting, with a brush as a differential. Momoiro comes in two weights plus italics to cover as much design needs as possible. It compliments from OpenType features such as ligatures, swashes, true fractions, old style numerals and stylistic sets.

Sudtipos is proud to announce the release of Clockmaker, an 8-weight family that takes initial inspiration from typography around the turn of the twentieth century. Clockmaker takes aesthetic references from Victorian, Art Nouveau and Art Deco advertising and typography, taking special influence from John F. Cummings’ all-caps – and never digitized – type design Elandkay.  Clockmaker is a robust multi-weight family that includes an array of ligatures as well as alternate characters and support for all latin languages. The design process began with developing and modernizing the uppercase letterforms, followed by designing the lowercase and additional weights. Creating a diverse and playful set of uppercase ligatures was an almost endlessly enjoyable task; they are one of Clockmaker’s most charming features. Clockmaker is an impeccable choice for designs requiring a vintage flair such as a luxury liquor labels, restaurant identities, lavish hotels and many other applications where elegance and grace are needed.   In addition to its historical references, Clockmaker is an homage to my grandfather who was a master craftsman, repairing antique clocks and fine watches with great skill and mathematical precision. Watching him work was fascinating and it has been a joy to remember those quiet and curious moments from my childhood while designing this font.

Trump Gothic is a reconception of ideas from Georg Trump's seminal 1955 Signum typeface and its later reworking (Kamene) by Czech designer Stanislav Marso. Originally cobbled together for a variety of film projects in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Trump Gothic family was made available for the general public in 2005. Shortly thereafter, it became a common sight in movie credits, on posters and magazine covers, in fashion branding and on corporate web sites. Though countless attempts have been made to emulate it, its unique totality and attractiveness to layout designers was never really topped. Its appeal is largely due to its double-duty toolbox: An economic functionality that allows it to pack large amounts of information in small spaces, and a clear, modular aesthetic that gives it the ability to emphasize short text in large sizes, all without sacrificing legibility or giving in to dated or over-rehashed industrial gothic forms. The typeface was redrawn, refitted, optimized and greatly expanded in 2013, and the result is Trump Gothic Pro, a multiscript family of six fonts, each containing over 1020 glyphs and a wealth of OpenType features, including small caps, caps-to-small-caps, stylistic alternates, unicase/monocase alternates, fractions, ordinals, class-based kerning, and support for Latin, Cyrillic and Greek locales.

New Orleans, June 25, 1895 My dear Edmond, I found upon my return home to dinner yesterday, your letter informing me of your affection for Annie and asking that we confide her future happiness to your keeping... This excerpt was taken from a letter written by designer Kathryn Podorsky’s great-great-grandfather, Lucien Doize, in response to Edmond’s request to marry his daughter, Annie. The letter was not only beautiful contextually, but exquisitely penned and epitomized the delightful charm of the New Orleans people of the time. Vena Amoris, or “Vein of Love” refers to a phrase coined by Henry Swinburne in his A Treatise of Espousal published in 1686. Vena Amoris also refers to the fourth finger on the left hand which was traditionally believed to contain a vein running directly to the heart, hence “the ring finger.” As a digital font, Vena Amoris boasts an extensive Latin-based character set that supports 51 languages. Also included are stylistic and contextual alternates, ligatures, swash variants, oldstyle figures, and roman numerals and calligraphic words that will undoubtedly bring a dynamic quality to any setting. All of those extras are driven by cleverly applied OpenType features allowing you to add harmony and calligraphic beauty to your layout.

Developed for screen For not the first time, Fontsmith was commissioned to develop a font for one of the UK’s terrestrial TV channels. The product was a clearly-defined three-weight family. When italics were added, it became FS Matthew, a clean, stylish, structured sans serif with swooping, open curves and a bright, lively personality. Southbank Inspiration for many of the forms of FS Matthew came from details found within the modernist buildings and architecture of London’s Southbank, such as the Royal Festival Hall. During the font’s gestation, Jason had found himself at London Studios, a TV studio on Southbank, and a wander around the neighbouring arts buildings proved thought-provoking. The result was a font with a very British character: solid forms that provide the platform for innovation and distinctiveness. Feelgood efficiency FS Matthew’s trademark is efficiency with a feelgood factor: disciplined enough for corporate identities, websites and signing systems, and colourful enough for logotypes and advertising. Its versatility and excellent legibility are achieved via some unexpected details: the reaching curves of the “g” and “y”; the simple shape of the “u”; an off-kilter “k”; generous counters; and a slightly condensed aspect that makes FS Matthew a space-saver in text or title sizes.

Epica is a contemporary interpretation of the Venetian Renaissance types. A humanist type family with a contemporary design. This family encompasses different typographic scenarios with emphasis in style and functional equilibrium. Its letterforms show the visual richness of Epica that includes some calligraphic reminiscences perfectly legible in small and display sizes. Its strong personality makes it distinguish, because it perfectly combines the elegance of antique typographies and the forcefulness of contemporary ones. This family has been designed in two different moments. Epica Serif, which have a more classical design, was finished 5 years ago in its first version. The first sketches were drew 8 years ago during the Master of Type Design at the University of Buenos Aires. Through the years was re design in several times to the point of reaching its current version. On the other hand, Epica Sans was completed in 2020 and is the counterpart of Epica Serif. A complementary system designed to enrich the serif version and give new options for hierarchy and composition. This is a versatile type family perfectly fit for books, editorial, and usage in print and on screens. It possesses great legibility in body texts, which makes it ideal for extended reading and supports a variety of languages.

Around the turn of the twentieth-century, Steel and copper plate engraving was the most sophisticated and expensive method for producing business cards, stationery, and formal announcements. In engraved printing, the image is incised, or engraved into a hard, flat plate. Ink is applied to the plate, and then wiped off; leaving only the ink that is trapped below the surface in the incised areas. When the paper is pressed against the flat plate, the ink is drawn out of these areas and transferred to the paper. The results are twofold: printing which sits above the surface of the paper, and the reproduction very delicate lines and shapes. For business and formal printing, engraved printing was, and is, considered the best. The problem is that not everybody can afford the best. Type foundries, in the early 1900s, figured that if they could produce a typeface for traditional printing, which had appearance of engraving, they would be able to satisfy the needs of those forced to live with modest printing budgets. Engravers faces were born. Fredric Goudy’s Copperplate Gothic was one of the most popular. Plate Gothic is a version of this style updated for digital technology. It has all the charm and charisma as the metal type and yet is perfect for today's needs.

ITC Tabula is meant to be read. The design grew out of a study to create a font to set film subtitles. According to Julien Janiszewski, the face's Paris-based designer, “I set parameters for the design whereby the letters had to be able to hold up at very small sizes when set on film and yet must be able to be enlarged 2000 times to be read on a theatre screen.” The subtitle font was not completed, but several months later Janiszewski revisited the design and made a discovery. “I realized that the constraints I had established for the subtitling font was not that far from those people could have in creating typographic signage. Many time this calls for a font that can be used easily in very large sizes for headlines on highway billboards and quite small for text copy.” Work proceeded for two more years before Janiszewski was satisfied with the results. The final design is a somewhat squared sans serif family of four weighs with corresponding italics. Janiszewski also wanted to create what he calls a “sensitive sans-one that is not restricted to geometric shapes but has a subtle calligraphic, foundation.” ITC Tabula is not only easy to read, it is also a distinctive and handsome design.

Optimum readability in small bodies with scarce interlining, under poor printing conditions such as in newspapers, where velocity and bad quality’s irregular surface papers, truly distort strokes was the challenge taken. Pobla was designed with this in mind, hence Patau present a hybrid between the conventional strokes of a serif’s classical roman type and markedly “fractured” forms inside, providing a unique personality to this typographic family, where calligraphic’s humanistic axis is visibly broken with the straight axis of the fabricated letters. Subtle details in the serifs, give it a modern look to a classic skeleton. Very pronounced ink traps get the shapes rounded in the printed product to artificially increase the average medium-eye and promote reading in the small sizes it was designed for. An absolutely handwriting look for the italics, where the rupture of the stroke marks a white’s subtle change to only whisper in the printing surface a slight difference, but without fuss and so not to break the rhythm of reading. And as we are used to, a complete set of OpenType features, where you will find small caps, fractions, ligatures, old numerals and tabular, discretionary ligatures and support for 220 languages; and all available in twelve weights to meet the needs of any newspaper printing.

The Englishman William Caslon punchcut many roman, italic, and non-Latin typefaces from 1720 until his death in 1766. At that time most types were being imported to England from Dutch sources, so Caslon was influenced by the characteristics of Dutch types. He did, however, achieve a level of craft that enabled his recognition as the first great English punchcutter. Caslon's roman became so popular that it was known as the script of kings, although on the other side of the political spectrum (and the ocean), the Americans used it for their Declaration of Independence in 1776. The original Caslon specimen sheets and punches have long provided a fertile source for the range of types bearing his name. Identifying characteristics of most Caslons include a cap A with a scooped-out apex; a cap C with two full serifs; and in the italic, a swashed lowercase v and w. Caslon's types have achieved legendary status among printers and typographers, and are considered safe, solid, and dependable. A few of the many interpretations from the early twentieth century were true to the source, as well as strong enough to last into the digital era. Caslon Black was designed by Dave Farey in the ITC library.

The original brief for Vox was a extensive monoline typeface that can be both precise and friendly, yet contain enough choice of seamlessly interchangeable variants for the user to be able to completely transform the personality of the typeface depending on the application. Basically, a sans serif with applications that range from clean and transparent information relay to sleek and angular branding. When the first version of Vox was released in 2007, it became an instant hit with interface designers, product packagers, sports channels, transport engineers and electronics manufacturers. This new version (2013) is the expanded treatment, which is even more dedicated to the original idea of abundant application flexibility. The family was expanded to five weights and two widths, with corresponding italics, for a total of 20 fonts. Each font contains 1240 glyphs. Localization includes Cyrillic and Greek, as well as extended Latin language support. Built-in OpenType features include small caps, caps to small caps, four completely interchangeable sytlistic alternates sets, automatic fractions, six types of figures, ordinals, and meticulous class-based kerning. This kind of typeface malleability is not an easy thing to come by these days. For additional versatility, take a look at Vox Round, the softer, but just as extensive, counterpart to this family.

Art Gothic was attributed to the Central Type Foundry of St. Louis, Missouri, USA by Henry Lewis Bullen, writing in INLAND PRINTER in 1907, with a reproduction shown in Kelly’s American Wood Type. The typeface appears on the cover of an issue of “The Superior Printer” pictured in Typology by Heller and Fili dated in the 1870s. Art Gothic was designed in 1884 by Gustav Schroeder and proved to be one of the more popular and enduring of the American-designed Victorian display faces of the period, appearing frequently in ads in various publications. The Hamilton Mfg. Co showed a very similar wood type, No. 232, with a modified and rather heavy-handed upper case in 1892. As late as 1897, it may be found in the advertising section of The Ivy of Trinity College of Hartford, Connecticut and was included in the Norwood Press 1902 Specimen Book. Our font includes a complement of five upper case and four lower case alternatives as follows: 123=C, 125=E, 135=H, 137=S, 172=c, 175=e, 215=m and 247=s. Great for period pieces. ART GOTHIC HIH is clean, readable, and surprisingly modern-looking; unlike so many overly complex Victorian display fonts, it can be used in text sizes.

Remember when a coyote was a light-boned rangy member of the canine family and not the name (spelled C-A-O-T-I) of your neighbor's four year old daughter? When a cricket was a leaping, chirping insect and not the name (spelled K-R-I-Q-U-I-T-T-E) of your purple-haired, pierced-tongued waitress? When Madison and Austin were cities, when brie was a variety of cheese, when radon and alar were hazardous substances and NOT FIRST NAMES? Burghal Design remembers the good old days, when people were not named Whisper, Zandren, Skylar or Dakota but were called Eleanor, Arthur, Edward and Irene. In the spirit of these classic monikers, we give you Mildred, a script font family for proud and simple folk: the down to earth Mildred Plain, hearty Mildred Stout, the barely-there Mildred Scrawn,and the barfly Mildred Cocktail. There's also the slightly more formal (but still all-purpose) Mildred Fancy, bolder Mildred Strong, and the wisp of Mildred Mild. Rounding out the family is Mildred Ornaments, a collection of symbols that can be used for snowflakes, for bullets, or just for fun. Mildred: just an old-fashioned, hard working font.

The Younger Futhark, also called Scandinavian runes, is a runic alphabet and a reduced form of the Elder Futhark, with only 16 characters, in use from about the 9th century, after a "transitional period" during the 7th and 8th centuries. The reduction, somewhat paradoxically, happened at the same time as phonetic changes that led to a greater number of different phonemes in the spoken language, when Proto-Norse evolved into Old Norse. Also, the writing custom avoided carving the same rune consecutively for the same sound, so the spoken distinction between long and short vowels was lost in writing. Thus, the language included distinct sounds and minimal pairs that were written the same. The Younger Futhark is divided into long-branch (Danish) and short-twig (Swedish and Norwegian) runes; in the 10th century, it was further expanded by the "Hälsinge Runes" or staveless runes. The lifetime of the Younger Futhark corresponds roughly to the Viking Age. Their use declined after the Christianization of Scandinavia; most writing in Scandinavia from the 12th century was in the Latin alphabet, but the runic scripts survived in marginal use in the form of the medieval runes (in use ca. 1100–1500) and the Latinised Dalecarlian runes (ca. 1500–1910)

Change Serif is a typeface family designed as a part of Mateusz Machalski's PhD project, carried out in 2015-2021. The main goal was to create a typeface allowing for the typesetting of complex humanistic texts, containing many historical letterforms. The starting point was the preparation of most of the glyphs provided in unicode for Latin, Cyrillic and Greek. From the formal point of view, the Change family is based on Renaissance proportions with contemporary details. Classic upright version is paired with expressive and calligraphic italics, inspired by the works of Robert Granjon. Each of the styles contains about 4,000 characters, allowing for a broad range of typesetting capabilities – multiscript publications, historical translations, and texts transcription. The crucial aspect was to treat all scripts equally. All OpenType features, such as swashes, final forms, decorative ligatures, can be found in Latin, Cyrillic and also Greek. The name of the typeface refers to the design process in which there are constant changes and corrections. On the other hand, it means to convey how this project influenced my perception of typography and allowed me to embrace it as a medium of artistic expression. Due to its similar proportions, Change works perfectly with the Gaultier typeface.