This book and newspaper font was designed by Francesco Simoncini in 1958. After the Second World War brought type design to a standstill, the years of reconstruction meant a reconsideration of old values in the typographical world as well as in Europe in general. Aster is the result of this movement, displaying instead of Modern Face influence, a tendency toward Transitional characteristics and giving text a light feel.

Soldier Slab Stencil Dstrssd. is a grungy military stencil font. The bold slab characters provide a great base to present the distressed effect. The font has been developed from a war related computer game project. The font contains 26 letters of the English alphabet in capitals and alternative capitals are represented when typing in lowercase letters. Each font also contains numbers, punctuation and a range of Latin characters as displayed.

Gimcrack is "showy but cheap or badly made" - that's what a search on the internet says. Well, that description fits this font quite well - although it was deliberately made that way!

This is the kind of font which is up to trouble. Not trouble in a bad way, but trouble like when you are in no way prepared what is going to happen. The font is handmade and playful - and to help that playfullness come to live, the 5 different versions of each letter helps! Watch your words change while you write with Budskab! And, by the way..."budskab" is message in danish...just thought you should know!

AwanZaman has a three-phase story, beginning with Dr Mamoun Sakkal’s two Arabic styles and culminating with Juliet Shen’s Latin extension. AwanZaman started as simply Awan, a commission for a modern, clean, monoline typeface for writing headlines and story titles in a forward-thinking Kuwaiti newspaper. Awan was based on the geometric forms of Kufic script, while in phase two, a second typeface (Zaman) was designed to add enough calligraphic Naskh details to make it easy to read in demanding newspaper settings. Together these two phases give the typeface a warm, familiar, and progressive look, as well as an explanatory two-part name — AwanZaman. Since most editorials use typical Naskh headline fonts with an exaggerated baseline, Awan’s rational forms immediately distinguish it as a modern and progressive voice in the crowded field of Arabic editorial typefaces. As the companion Arabic typeface, Zaman has the same basic proportions and forms as Awan, but with many cursive, energetic, and playful details. And since modern monoline fonts are increasingly being used to set extended texts, more features were borrowed from Naskh calligraphy to expand the typeface’s use from headlines into text setting. When using the AwanZaman Arabic family, Awan (geometric Kufic forms) is the starting point. To add the sweeping, energetic personality of Zaman (calligraphic Naskh forms), simply activate an alternate character through the option of 20 stylistic sets available in any OpenType-savvy software. The two typefaces function as one file — the AwanZaman Arabic family — allowing users to combine features from both designs to transform the appearance of text from geometric and formal to playful and informal. The third phase of AwanZaman’s development introduced a companion Latin typeface designed by Juliet Shen to fulfil the persistent need in the Arabic fonts market for modern and geometric bilingual type families. Due to the Arabic’s monolinear strokes, AwanZaman Latin was destined to be a sans serif with a tall x-height, larger counters, and corresponding stem thickness to harmonise with the Arabic’s overall text colour and page presence. But it needed much more. One of AwanZaman’s chief assets is making the two languages look on a par when typeset side by side. Arabic and English readers will have a different sense of what that entails, but this type family defers to the Arabic — graceful and artistic with a good mix of straight stems and curved forms. Latin in general doesn’t aesthetically flow the way Arabic does, yet the tone of the Latin needed to mirror both the Arabic’s more squarish curves and formal personality of Awan and the undulating and more playful shapes of Zaman without looking outlandish. That need was met by creating some novel Latin characters, which are accessed through four stylistic sets the same way as AwanZaman Arabic. The alternates are not just clever in the way they look and how they echo the Arabic aesthetic, but also in harmonising the disparate languages and serving designers well when needing a balanced, bilingual text face with a warm and lively voice. AwanZaman is a clever, seven-weight powerhouse that makes extensive use of OpenType’s stylistic sets (20 in the Arabic and four in the Latin) so writers and designers can make the most of everything from a single glyph in display sizes down to dense text in paragraphs. As AwanZaman Arabic has no italic, neither does the Latin; contextual distinction normally handled by italics is achieved by exploiting the family’s seven weights. AwanZaman’s intricate OpenType programming supports Persian and Urdu, with features such as the returning tail of Barri Yeh treated properly. From its inception in geometry to its melding of two worlds with novel forms, AwanZaman is a personal labor by designers Dr Mamoun Sakkal and Juliet Shen, and embodies the TypeTogether ideals of serving the global community with innovative and stylish typeface solutions. The complete AwanZaman Arabic and Latin families, along with our entire catalogue, have been optimised for today’s varied screen uses.

In the course of the re-vitalization of its Typoart typeface inventory, Elsner+Flake decided in 2006 to offer the “Kis Antiqua” by Hildegard Korger, in a re-worked form and with an extended sortiment, as an OpenType Pro-version. After consultation with Hildegard Korger, Elsner+Flake tasked the Leipzig type designer Erhard Kaiser with the execution of the re-design and expansion of the sortiment. Detlef Schäfer writes in “Fotosatzschriften Type-Design+Schrifthersteller”, VEB Fachbuchverlag Leipzig, 1989: No other printing type has ever generated as far-reaching a controversy as this typeface which Jan Tschichold called the most beautiful of all the old Antiqua types. For a long time, it was thought to have been designed by Anton Janson. In 1720 a large number of the original types were displayed in the catalog of the „Ehrhardische Gycery“ (Ehrhardt Typefoundry) in Leipzig. Recently, thanks to the research performed by Beatrice Warde and especially György Haimann, it has been proven unambiguously that the originator of this typeface was Miklós (Nicholas) Tótfalusi Kis (pronounced „Kisch“) who was born in 1650 in the Hungarian town of Tótfal. His calvinistic church had sent him to the Netherlands to oversee the printing of a Hungarian language bible. He studied printing and punch cutting and earned special recognition for his Armenian and Hebrew types. Upon his return to Hungary, an emergency situation forced him to sell several of his matrice sets to the Ehrhardt Typefoundry in Leipzig. In Hungary he printed from his own typefaces, but religious tensions arose between him and one of his church elders. He died at an early age in 1702. The significant characteristics of the “Dutch Antiqua” by Kis are the larger body size, relatively small lower case letters and strong upper case letters, which show clearly defined contrasts in the stroke widths. The “Kis Antiqua” is less elegant than the Garamond, rather somewhat austere in a calvinistic way, but its expression is unique and full of tension. The upper and lower case serifs are only slightly concave, and the upper case O as well as the lower case o have, for the first time, a vertical axis. In the replica, sensitively and respectfully (responsibly) drawn by Hildegard Korger, these characteristics of this pleasantly readable and beautiful face have been well met. For Typoart it was clear that this typeface has to appear under its only true name “Kis Antiqua.” It will be used primarily in book design. Elsner+Flake added two headline weights, which are available as a separate font family Kis Antiqua Now TH Pro Designer: Miklós (Nicholas) Tótfalusi Kis, 1686 Hildegard Korger, 1986-1988 Erhard Kaiser, 2008

Paralucent Slab is an addition to the ever-popular Paralucent family. Paralucent is versatile all-purpose modern sans and slab serif design. Available in seven weights, from Thin to Heavy, with corresponding italics, it avoids some of the more eccentric calligraphic quirks of Akzidenz or Helvetica or the cool precision of Univers for an elegant, functional, yet warm design. Several core ideas inform Paralucent’s design. Prime attention has given to the negative space between characters, giving a more even “colour”, especially in text. For example, the J, L and T have shorter arms than comparable sans typefaces, while the M and W are wider. The A has a lower bar, opening up the interior counter. An unusually high lower-case x-height again helps to give a more even colour and improve legibility. Care has been taken to rationalise repeated elements like the tails on lower-case letters, or the Q and the “ear” of the g. Typographic design solutions that are consistent across all these features add more stylistic cohesion. ‘Ink traps’ are exaggerated incisions used to open up a letter's narrower internal angles, which can become clogged with ink, especially in small point sizes. Now largely redundant due to the high quality of modern print, they are still sometimes used as a stylistic quirk or design feature. Now that digital fonts are often reversed or outlined, or enlarged to enormous sizes, these can also lead to unexpected or obtrusive results. Paralucent takes these inevitable digital manipulations into account, and adds optical corrections without resort to ink traps. The family has been picked up by many UK and US publishers, featuring heavily in magazines like Loaded, Heat and TV Quick, as well as high-end coffee-table photography books and gallery websites. The addition of the Slab family adds even more options for running text and headline.

At one time very recently, serifs were lost to the design sinners of the world. Now see them found again. Unearthed and rediscovered. Retribution is not far off. We have been unchained from the belief that gothics have provided us no way back from a lack of variety and interest.

There are many script typefaces but there is only one Scripticus. Scripticus is like a chameleon: In whatever surroundings you put it, it adapts itself and looks like it couldn't be anywhere else. Be it a sales advertisement, a music Website, a comic strip or a journal with complex chemical formula – Scripticus always solves the problem in a natural and leisurely way. And it never makes compromises concerning clarity. But where does Scripticus come from? … From the good old high school blackboard! Blackboards have become almost obsolete in teaching, but be it a black or white background – clear, strong characters placed on the board while the facts are explained are still one of the best ways to make and keep things understandable. Scripticus is dedicated to my high school chemistry teacher who was an expert in just this. While the letterforms come from different inspirations, its aim is the same as the pedagogical aim of my teacher: Combining clarity with a strong personality. Scripticus has a special trick to give it its natural look: Four alternates for each letter and each number plus rotation coding make the glyphs appear in lively melodic flow. In this way even mathematic equations look nice! Scripticus has a lot of OT-features that help it do its job. They are: capital spacing, localized forms, subscript, scientific inferiors, superscript, numerators, denominators, fractions, ordinals, tabular figures, historical forms, ligatures, stylistic alternates, stylistic set and ornaments. Finally, as is my general goal in type design – Scripticus supports close to one hundred languages from Latin extended to Cyrillic extended.

Nipon has an affiliation with the Far East. The first character I designed for this alphabet was the capital P. The stepped thin lines are linking to the Japanese characters and the circle shape is a classic Japanese element which means literally: the origin of the Sun, Nippon. So this is where the name comes from, I skipped one P in the name, so my Nipon gets his own identity. Next to this oriental look it also carries a light resemblance with a juwel box. Precious and elegant shapes for the gentle touch in writing.

OTF color font “Mexifont” Mexican National flag color creative letters and spanish national language symbols. Alphabet Mexico with capital letters, numbers, punctuation mark. You can use this font for design quotes prints on t-shirts, sport souvenirs, mexican food menu and other. OpenType-SVG Font was designed with Fontself Maker in Illustrator CC. Contains only uppercase letters and digits. WARNING Color fonts are pretty new technology - they currently show up in Photoshop CC 2017+, Illustrator CC 2018 and some Mac apps. Learn more about color font support on third-party apps here: https://www.colorfonts.wtf/

Axteroid was made to look like something that was teleported from a computergame from way-back in the 80s. To make it more 21st century-like, I have spiced the font up with some OpenType alternate letters and ligatures! You will need to use OpenType supporting applications to use the autoligatures.

The cool, the sans and the light: Mudstone fonts are proudly packed with nice oddities and quirks. These are definitely fonts for getting noticed, in an affirmative, authentic way. Mudstone fonts are all caps, each with at least 2 sets of uppercase letters that will cycle at the command of the contextual alternates feature. There are also stylistic alternates in each font, for that extra something. Critically cool, seriously creative, dangerously unique. Definitely trying? Cool!!

Browsing online auctions is a wonderful way to pick up ideas for font designs. Take Condensed Stencil JNL for example. This font was modeled from a set of vintage brass interlocking stencils.

Patzcuaro is a summer resort by a lake of the same name. It is situated 370 km west of Ciudad de Mexico and a visitor from Europe, on seeing it, will be reminded of the Austrian Rust or the South Bohemian Trebon. The town's colonial architecture is protected as a historical monument, the reddish-brown tint of the footings of the buildings, their white facades and even the type of lettering with red initials is prescribed - and these regulations are also complied with as far as cars are concerned. This colour scheme is splendid in combination with the rich gamut of greys of the stone window jambs, vaults, lintels and pillars. Joking apart, even the local petrol station is 16th-century in appearance. Patzcuaro Regular is a cosy, welcoming type face which is good for use on labels.

Last year, we visited Brazil and we were totally captivated by its cheerful and warm people. Its wild nature is absolutely amazing and very noticeable in textile printing as well as in floral design. That was precisely what inspired us to create some ornaments and dingbats, which we then turned into a single typographic work. The resulting typeface was called Garden , a serif display handmade font with a playful and spontaneous feel. The Garden family offers a font with a set of original “catchwords” (‘Garden Catchwords’, based on brush calligraphy), floral dingbats and botanical ornaments. Please be aware, “Garden Catchwords” is a ‘Catchwords’ font, and does not offer standard AlphaNumeric characters. The OpenType version provides a wide range of creative options. Garden is well-suited for text composition, posters, headlines, label design and handmade-style items. Garden is inspiration, nature and joy!

A unique design accurately revived by Steve Matteson in 2021. Frederic Goudy designed Companion Old Style for Women’s Home Companion in 1928. In his own words: “I believe the new letter I showed him, both in roman and italic, is one of the most distinctive types I have ever made. It incorporates features which deliberately violate tradition as to stress and curves, but which are so handled that attention is not specifically drawn to the innovations introduced.” Companion Old Style exudes the style of pre-World War 2 Americana. The unique characteristics are wonderful for greeting cards, wedding announcements and holiday invitations. Companion’s nostalgic letterforms are light hearted and quirky yet highly readable.

About family “SaetaPro” Wind games… The name is taken from an old paper toy made by someone who makes paper planes with teasing messages. But there are also songs with a strong feeling in flamenco style. It is also a way of expression in order to give way to emotion and interpersonal communication. They are wind games that people have been playing for a long time ago!!! This series is composed and includes twelve fonts with 632 glyphs each, with true italics, true Sloping and supports of course: Latin, Greek & Cyrillic.

Type Tiles JNL is based on a ‘completed’ version of ‘Alpha-Blox’ by American Type Founders, circa 1944. The capitals, lower case and numerals shown in the sample sheet put out by ATF depicted type made with five-high blocks comprised of modular units spaced two points apart. These units could be combined in varying ways to create custom type of varying heights and widths and was available for purchase in both linear (multi-line) and reverse (white on black) formats. Using the 'reverse' model shown on the sample sheet, all of the characters were re-created digitally, and missing punctuation, foreign characters and other glyphs found in a basic computer font were drawn and added. The 'J' and 'T' in the type sample had truncations, so a more complete character was created for each of those letters. For those wanting an unbroken string of words or blank end caps, there is a double column space on the vertical bar key. A single column space is located on the broken bar key for shorter end caps. Type Tiles JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions

Birka is the first typeface I designed from scratch. It took a whole year of my weekend and evening hours and is the typeface that teached me everything I know about type design. It is easy too see that I had Garamond in mind when drawing it. Birka is beautiful" was the comment of the well known Swedish designer Bo Berndal when he first saw it. That comment gave me the courage to design more and more typefaces. In a Danish article about Scandinavian type design, Birka was taken as example of a typical Swedishness in typography. I am not sure what the writer had in mind, but it surely sounded well. Birka has its name from the ancient Viking town Birka, whose remains are found not far away from Stockholm. Birka was released in 1992."

Brandon Grotesque is a sans serif type family of six weights plus matching italics. It was designed by Hannes von Döhren in 2009/10. Influenced by the geometric-style sans serif faces that were popular during the 1920s and 30s, the fonts are based on geometric forms that have been optically corrected for better legibility. Brandon Grotesque has a functional look with a warm touch. While the thin and the black weights are great performers in display sizes the light, regular and medium weights are well suited to longer texts. The small x-height and the restrained forms lend it a distinctive elegance. Brandon Grotesque is equipped for complex, professional typography. The OpenType fonts have an extended character set to support Central and Eastern European as well as Western European languages. Brandon Grotesque won the TDC2 Award, 2011.

Quicken was inspired by the spirit of the past, when manual labor was common, and technology was just beginning to develop. Retro style and combination with Hand Lettering style, specially for traditional typography lovers and anyone who want to add natural handmade feeling in its brand identity. It comes with Lovely clean versions that expands its possibilities in use. Quicken is very good looking in logo, labels, t-shirt prints, product packaging, invitations, advertising and others. I've designed some examples, so you can see how it can be used. To enable the OpenType Stylistic alternates, you need a program that supports OpenType features such as Adobe Illustrator CS, Adobe Indesign & CorelDraw X6-X7. There are additional ways to access alternates, using Character Map (Windows), Nexus Font (Windows), Font Book (Mac) or a software program such as PopChar (for Windows and Mac).

LiebeRobots is not your average collection of mean termination machines. LiebeRobots are friendly and polite. Some are from Mars, some from Venus, and some are probably from Germany. Most are from the future, some are from the past. And a handful are even from the 60s. LiebeRobots probably is the most comprehensive collection of hand-drawn robots ever. They look great on almost any greeting card, birthday card or invitation. LiebeRobots also serve as a perfect companion to any informal graphic design that needs a personal, handmade touch.

There is something special about thin fonts. On one side there is the sensitive, charming and warm touch, on other side they are uncompromising, thoroughgoing. Here the contrast can't hide the clear shapes. Hilton Serif and Hilton Sans are a pair of highly legible, subtle and elegant sans-serif and semi-serif display faces. The quality of spacing and kerning are ensured by Igino Marini.

Sasparillo is an "extreme" Tuscan face, with reversed emphasis, by which we mean the horizontals are far heavier than the verticals. Recreate the spirit of the "Wild West" with a sense of fun!

SF Animatron is a complete transformation of one of our older designs, SF TransRobotics, which was inspired by those futuristic robots who like to pretend they're cars, trucks, planes, and things like that.

Don't you HATE it when this happens? You're protesting the war in Iraq, and the other protesters keep pointing at you and giggling. You can't figure out what they could possibly be laughing at...You look up and then it hits you: you're holding a sign that looks like it was made by your 5-year old kid brother. It's sloppy, the words are crooked, hell, it's BARELY READABLE. How is anyone ever going to take you seriously with THAT SIGN???? There's only one solution...To further your cause, you need Burghal Design's Peace font. Peace contains upper and lower letters, numbers, punctuation, even foreign accented characters! Clean, concise, and oh, SO legible, you'll have no problem getting your message across with this typeface. Who knows, you might even make the evening news.

Friendly, warm and quirky, yet with a certain elegance, Pleuf Pro is a hand-drawn rounded serif family with extensive language support and a bunch of OpenType features. Great for projects which need a handcrafted, homemade, friendly, warm, personal vibe; it's individualistic without being overly eccentric, and quirky without being illegible. The clean, delicate lines of the lighter weights convey a graceful elegance without losing warmth. Ideal uses would include bar and café menus, greetings cards, food and drink packaging, and anything aimed at kids.

CONCEPT/CHARACTERISTICS What is a child­like, naive wri­t­ing, acting not boring sta­tic, has enough personality/character and yet is easy to read? › Over­si­zed points › Slightly cur­ved, warm and fri­endly bars › Open, fri­endly forms › Orga­nic, lightly bat­te­red forms APPLICATION AREA The fri­endly, play­ful and warm cha­rac­ter of the font »Kiddy Sans« would look good at dis­play size for party flyer & movie pos­ter, music covers or head­lines in maga­zi­nes or websites… TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS Head­line Font | Dis­play Font | Sans Serif Font »kiddy Sans« with 8 styles & 366 gly­phs, inkl. accents & €

Handsome was the first digital typeface to resemble nice, ordinary, fully cursive handwriting. Or neon. In 2005, Handsome Pro was one of the first script typefaces to utilize the OpenType format to simulate the natural quality of writing, by automatically substituting alternate contextual glyphs. The effect follows the conventional “joining rules” of calligraphy, which are a formalization of the way in which letter forms are modified in cursive handwriting for the sake of speed and efficiency—and also perhaps to make life more interesting. For the look of real handwriting, Handsome is most convincing at around 15 pts. At much smaller or larger sizes it works differently. At display size, the feel of the non-nib styles is very slick, more like a speedball Kauffman, owing to the smoothness of the finish. As script fonts go, Handsome has a relatively large x-height, which can be useful if you don't want the “writing” to look too small.

What intrigued me about Buslingthorpe was the virtuoso challenge it presented, of designing a typeface that would, despite a ridiculously tiny x-height, still possess a coherent harmony betwen upper and lower case, and read confortably. At the same time, beyond pure plastic formality, I was aware that there are strong connotations of historicism in this noble style, with overtones of regal magnificence, on account of the extravagant leading and generous point size required for adequate visibility—in traditional letterpress printing such proportions, with so few characters per square inch, were pricey and devoured resources. There are two iconic early 20th century designs in the genre: Koch Antiqua (Rudolf Koch, Klingspor Foundry, 1922) and Lucian (Lucian Bernhard, Bauer Foundry, 1925). Both these have x-heights smaller than fifty percent of ascender height, which nominally defines the category. So I made these my benchmarks, and determined to outdo them in dramatic fashion. —Nick Shinn, Orangeville, March 2021

Do you want to give a cheerful and carefree mood to your work? Rither will ideally help to bring your ideas into reality! Rither was created for warm emotions and the most cheerful projects!

Sometimes you need things organised in a neat way. Organic Tuesday has that, but also a will to break free at the same time. Years ago I was at a restaurant where the menu was handwritten with a clumsy, but characteristic and charming, monospaced font. I must have focused so much on these letters that I can’t recall what I actually ate. But what I do remember is that it was a Tuesday, and the restaurant was organic!

Lycia (Lycian: 𐊗𐊕𐊐𐊎𐊆𐊖 Trm̃mis; Greek: Λυκία, Lykia; Turkish: Likya) was a geopolitical region in Anatolia in what are now the provinces of Antalya and Muğla on the southern coast of Turkey, bordering the Mediterranean Sea, and Burdur Province inland. Known to history since the records of ancient Egypt and the Hittite Empire in the Late Bronze Age, it was populated by speakers of the Luwian language group. Written records began to be inscribed in stone in the Lycian language (a later form of Luwian) after Lycia's involuntary incorporation into the Achaemenid Empire in the Iron Age. At that time (546 BC) the Luwian speakers were decimated, and Lycia received an influx of Persian speakers. Ancient sources seem to indicate that an older name of the region was Alope (Ancient Greek: Ἀλόπη, Alópē). Lycia fought for the Persians in the Persian Wars, but on the defeat of the Achaemenid Empire by the Greeks, it became intermittently a free agent. After a brief membership in the Athenian Empire, it seceded and became independent (its treaty with Athens had omitted the usual non-secession clause), was under the Persians again, revolted again, was conquered by Mausolus of Caria, returned to the Persians, and finally fell under Macedonian hegemony upon the defeat of the Persians by Alexander the Great. Due to the influx of Greek speakers and the sparsity of the remaining Lycian speakers, Lycia was rapidly Hellenized under the Macedonians, and the Lycian language disappeared from inscriptions and coinage.

This design incorporates different styles into a consistent look. A pinch of script, a little of geometric and some humanistic shapes as well create a very distinguishable sans-serif. It has an overall good feeling specially on the heavier weights that have intended contrast irregularities to create a 'cartoonish' look. On the intermediate weights the design will preform well on small font sizes because of its large counters, low contrast and large x-height, but as you go to the extremes you will see shapes full of personality that will pop out in large font sizes. The font is loaded with opentype features such as small caps, ligatures, alternates, old style figures, and much more. The italic version is deeply rooted in the calligraphic heritage of the Italics. This way the brush inspired strokes are emphasized as well as an overall calligraphic look. Far from being a mere slant, Mangerica Italic had every lowercase glyph redesigned as well as some uppercase, besides that, every glyph was optically adjusted to ensure not only aesthetics but functionality too.

Diad was born on 2000 in order to design posters about second World War. The original idea was obtained by breaking, burning and getting wet a bunch of written copies with an old writing machine. Today, Diad is a small typographic system useful for bringing relevance to any content with a grunge look. Each and every detail passed through a strict experimentation process. Its outrageous and unconventional spirit travels from high leveled corrosion, up to a delicate visual neglect. Diad 2 and 3 work for designing words. Diad 1 is ideal for long phrases and titles. Diad dingbats includes 26 illustrations about motocross. In total, adding Diad 1,2 and 3, it has around 260 glyphs. Diad will make your design shine providing different graphic atmospheres, optimizing time and work to its users. Diad is perfect for graphic design on contexts such as death metal, drum and bass, films, war and horror video games. It could work also for logos, words, titles and short texts in covers, tags, clothes, wraps, cards, stickers, toys, bicycles, surf boards, etc.

It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that these letter shapes are familiar. They have the unmistakable color and weight of Cooper Black, Oswald Cooper's most famous typeface from 1921. What should be a surprise is that these letters are actually from George Auriol's Robur Noir (or Robur Black), published in France circa 1909 by the Peignot foundry as a bolder, solid counterpart to its popular Auriol typeface (1901). This face precedes Cooper Black by a dozen of years and a whole Great War. Cooper Black has always been a bit of a strange typographical apparition to anyone who tried to explain its original purpose, instant popularity in the 1920s, and major revival in the late 1960s. BB&S and Oswald Cooper PR aside, it is quite evident that the majority of Cooper Black's forms did not evolve from Cooper Old Style, as its originators claimed. And the claim that it collected various Art Nouveau elements is of course too ambiguous to be questioned. But when compared with Robur Noir, the "elements" in question can hardly be debated. The chronology of this "machine age" ad face in metal is amusing and stands as somewhat of a general index of post-Great War global industrial competition: - 1901: Peignot releases Auriol, based on the handwriting of George Auriol (the "quintessential Art Nouveau designer," according to Steven Heller and Louise Fili), and it becomes very popular. - 1909-1912: Peignot releases the Robur family of faces. The eight styles released are Robur Noir and its italic, a condensed version called Robur Noir Allongée (Elongated) and its italic, an outline version called Clair De Lune and its condensed/elongated, a lined/striped version called Robur Tigre, and its condensed/elongated counterpart. - 1914 to 1918: World War One uses up economies on both sides of the Atlantic, claims Georges Peignot with a bullet to the forehead, and non-war industry stalls for 4 years. - 1921: BB&S releases Cooper Black with a lot of hype to hungry publishing, manufacturing and advertising industries. - 1924: Robert Middleton releases Ludlow Black. - 1924: The Stevens Shanks foundry, the British successor to the Figgins legacy, releases its own exact copies of Robur Noir and Robur Noir Allongée, alongside a lined version called Royal Lining. - 1925: Oswald Cooper releases his Cooper Black Condensed, with similar math to Robur Noir Allongée (20% reduction in width and vectical stroke). - 1925: Monotype releases Frederick Goudy's Goudy Heavy, an "answer to Cooper Black". Type historians gravely note it as the "teacher steals from his student" scandal. Goudy Heavy Condensed follows a few years later. - 1928: Linotype releases Chauncey Griffith's Pabst Extra Bold. The condensed counterpart is released in 1931. When type production technologies changed and it was time to retool the old faces for the Typositor age, Cooper Black was a frontrunning candidate, while Robur Noir was all but erased from history. This was mostly due to its commercial revival by flourishing and media-driven music and advertising industries. By the late 1960s variations and spinoffs of Cooper Black were in every typesetting catalog. In the early- to mid-1970s, VGC, wanting to capitalize on the Art Nouveau onslaught, published an uncredited exact copy of Robur Black under the name Skylark. But that also went with the dust of history and PR when digital tech came around, and Cooper Black was once again a prime retooling candidate. The "old fellows stole all of our best ideas" indeed. So almost a hundred years after its initial fizz, Robur is here in digital form, to reclaim its rightful position as the inspiration for, and the best alternative to, Cooper Black. Given that its forms date back to the turn of the century, a time when foundry output had a closer relationship to calligraphic and humanist craft, its shapes are truer to brush strokes and much more idiosyncratic than Cooper Black in their totality's construct. Robur and Robur Italic come in all popular font formats. Language support includes Western, Central and Eastern European character sets, as well as Baltic, Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish, and Celtic/Welsh languages. A range of complementary f-ligatures and a few alternates letters are included within the fonts.

From the basement labs and after hours lounge of R?U?S?S?T Institute, we present After 5. With a somewhat formal (ha ha) yet warm, friendly feel, its normally calm, even tempered and sensible rhythm takes on the syncopated, jazzy beat that goes along with too many martinis when discretionary ligatures are turned on. A friend once asked, was I trying to design a font that looked sort of �Korean?� I said no, I was trying to mess up the Latin alphabet. So, here it is: After 5, a bold, upright condensed slab-serif display typeface with a mixed-up attitude. Complete with bold roman and matching italics. This attention getting font is ideal for Posters, headlines, Packaging and logos.

Manhattan was designed in 1970 for ITC by Tom Carnase, who also created Avant Garde Gothic. The distinguishing characteristic of this designer's work is found in the emphasis on the thick-thin constrast. In this case, Carnase approached the border of the impossible. The heavy vertical strokes stand opposite the finest of lines and the thick columns dominate the overall look. The basic forms are strictly constructed, as are those of Morris F. Benton's Broadway of 1925, to which many parallels can be found. Manhattan is best used for applications which will not be placed too far from the viewer, as at too great a distance the fine lines can no longer be seen. It should be used exclusively for headlines in medium point sizes.