Conrad X. 'Cobb' Shinn (Sept. 4, 1887- Jan. 28, 1951) was a Fillmore, Indiana-born post card illustrator who sold a series of successful novelty postcard lines which included (among others) Charlie Chaplin, automobiles and the Dutch culture in the beginning years of the 20th Century. After serving in World War I, Shinn found the market for novelty postcards dwindling, and he also lent his artistic skills to cartoon features and illustrating many children's books [including his own, under the nickname 'Uncle Cobb'] which taught easy step-by-step drawing methods. Some time in the 1920s, he eventually migrated into the field of supplying electrotypes and stereotypes of 'stock cuts' of photos and line art to the printing trade. In the days of letterpress printing, this was the forerunner of paper clip art and its successor, electronic clip art. Purchasing many of his designs from 'journeyman' artists of the time, the diversity of Cobb Shinn's stock cuts library grew with the passing years, reflecting changing times, styles and topics. Some of the illustrators whose signed works were presented in Shinn's 'CUTalogs' [as he called his stock cuts catalogs] include Mary Clemmitt, Louis H. Hippe, E.C. Klinge, Nelson White, Harvey Fuller, Bess Livings, Lois Head, Harvey Peake and Van Tuyl. Upon his passing in 1951, it's not known how long the Indianapolis-based company existed before finally closing its doors. One of the more popular series of cartoons were the line illustrations of men and women affectionately called 'little big head guys' by many modern fans of these cuts because the heads of the characters were drawn somewhat larger than the rest of their bodies. Shinn Kickers JNL is a collection twenty-six of these illustrations, and just like a kick in the shin (as the pun in the name implies), these charming cartoons get your attention.

Another typical Art Deco font from Nick Curtis. Uppercase only, but with alternate letterforms in the lowercase positions. I have completely redesigned all the diacritics (which were way too flimsy for this robust design) before expanding the character set in the usual fashion. Nick Curtis says: "Back in the Olden Days of Graphic Design B.C. (before computers), type freaks used to wait in anxious anticipation for each new release of the Letraset catalog. The inspiration for this font, Premiere Lightline, was one such release, and probably help spur my interest in Deco designs. The original font was VERY light indeed, suitable only for use in large sizes. My version is beefier, and includes an entire lower case of alternate letterforms, making this (at least) two fonts in one. The name is the 40’s hep talk equivalent of “Cool!”". ALL fonts from CheapProFonts have very extensive language support: They contain some unusual diacritic letters (some of which are contained in the Latin Extended-B Unicode block) supporting: Cornish, Filipino (Tagalog), Guarani, Luxembourgian, Malagasy, Romanian, Ulithian and Welsh. They also contain all glyphs in the Latin Extended-A Unicode block (which among others cover the Central European and Baltic areas) supporting: Afrikaans, Belarusian (Lacinka), Bosnian, Catalan, Chichewa, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Esperanto, Greenlandic, Hungarian, Kashubian, Kurdish (Kurmanji), Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Maori, Polish, Saami (Inari), Saami (North), Serbian (latin), Slovak(ian), Slovene, Sorbian (Lower), Sorbian (Upper), Turkish and Turkmen. And they of course contain all the usual “western” glyphs supporting: Albanian, Basque, Breton, Chamorro, Danish, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Frisian, Galican, German, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish (Gaelic), Italian, Northern Sotho, Norwegian, Occitan, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romance, Sami (Lule), Sami (South), Scots (Gaelic), Spanish, Swedish, Tswana, Walloon and Yapese.

Minimal, modular, modern—at first glance, Materia shows a contemporary flair, combining pure, strong geometrical form with a subtle, distinct appearance. Actually, the design was inspired by lettering from the turn of the 19th to the 20th century that still can be found in the East of France. While its formal origins date back as far as this, revived e. g. by the constructivists into the nineteen twenties and later on by Dutch information designer Wim Crouwel in the nineteen-sixties, the visual language of Materia still speaks of the »future«. Following a minimalistic concept the font is formally built on a grid. Wherever optical curves are needed for a smoother, more comfortable shape of letters than a simple rectangular block, diagonals cut off the egdes – like a diamond is cut to achieve more beauty. Thus headlines and texts set in Materia are given a certain »egdy« feeling, whereas their tonality is still kept well-balanced, keeping concentation all on information in a nonconfomist way. Materia comes in eight styles, from elegant Thin to attention-forcing Ultra. Even a regular Italic is available, following the classic type-set-principle. Two of the styles are explicitly designed for display use, Shadow and Code. Both are ready for combinations with Bold or each other respectively, the layering of Shadow and Code e. g. allows astonishing effects or highlighting within the letters. For OpenType-users Materia is a real Pro, containing accented Latin letters for over 70 languages, small caps, old style, tabular and lining figures and special condensed titling all caps for cases in which space is all that counts. How useful all of the above mentioned is may be seen in the book David Lynch – Lithos, designed by Koma Amok, published in 2010 by item éditions, Paris, and Hatje Cantz, Germany, which was typeset completely in Materia.

MMC Insignia, is an Iconic & Emblematic Neogothic Geometric Capitals Display… Assembled by Trivial Squares and Diagonals Symbols Pattern from a puzzled grid Aftermath!! Includes Stylistic Alternates!! +Extra Monospaced Figures. In 22 styles, with Obliques, both for single display and layer Typesetting, plus OpenType Features & Bonus Blocks Fonts! MMC Insignia is a Small Caps Typeface, which default lowercases character set is included in the Pro family, its cursive version, apart from it, has also Exclusive Stylistic Alternates… Its atmosphere stands by on both Corporative to Decorative, Modern, Fashion, Federalist, Bohemian, Romantic, Ludic, Treasured Look, Etc. This Display font-family is the result of the repeated applications of this unique infamous Icon or Symbol, of two counterpointed triangles, implicit as hourglasses, in order to compose an innovative and unprecedented typographic pattern and modulation concept through the letterforms, in an extremely Geometric style. The Graphic Sign used throughout this type, is a remarkable trend used already in Logos of different businesses, whose most famous case refers to a famous International Bank, which doesn’t need to be mentioned, as it is instantly associated! This characteristic innovation was the main motivation while creating this type. Usage Suggestions: Type Fancy Titling texts, Display Remarkable Logos, Branding Projects, Labels, Emblems, Fashion Patterns, or in everything Noble and designed for Excellence as a type of Insignia, or distinguished marks and attributes of Royalty and Power!! That’s also forwardly, the reason why it was named MMC Insignia… TIPS: 1-Combine styles into innumerous possibilities of Chromatic Typesetting, by ‘central pasting’ layers… You may dislocate layers for improvisations! 2-USE BLOCK “FREE-STYLES” 1 & 2 also to add default 3D! Change 3D directions by switching Block 1 to Block 2, that way you can Zig-Zag words and lines. *Also shift the block layer up to bottom limit, it makes the 3D direction turn upside down. Greetings! André, MMC-TypEngine.

Breaking from our catalog of typefaces to create a new handwritten font family, Modern Love was born out of our desire to see what would happen if we took a step back from the norm. We weren’t looking for the perfection of the many calligraphy techniques, but more of a natural way of writing with the same tools. Our escapist experiment into casual lettering culminated into 4 fonts: Modern Love Regular, Grunge, Rough and Caps. Modern Love Regular is a hand-painted script, each glyph individually designed with a pointed brush and walnut ink. The aim was to create an effortless hand-drawn feel while keeping the contrast high density. Playful, yet polished, this font works very well when accentuated with the family’s two distinctive styles: Modern Love Grunge, simulating a washed-out effect, perfect to add a vintage look to your projects; and Modern Love Rough, with its crunchy borders, makes letters visibly rough-around-the edges and gives large letters an unmistakeable pop. All three fonts include a hand-painted set of ornaments, swashes and alternates to limitlessly customize and decorate your texts, accessible through Opentype features. Modern Love Caps is the fourth font, a handwritten Sans Serif that ties the family together with its simplicity and readability. Designed with a pointed nib and Indian ink, this font boasts a different style that perfectly complements Modern Love Regular, Grunge and Rough. The result is a fresh font family perfect to create headlines, posters, DIY hand-lettered artwork, books, holiday cards, wrapping paper, invitations, T-shirts, labels, packaging for cosmetics, fashion supplies, food products, artisanal goods, and an endless array of options for your projects. Modern Love…when brush meets passion. Check out also ‘Modern Love Slanted’ Turquoise Nautica

"Relation Between Typology and Type Design" 'PRISTINE'; this font is—neither beautiful nor ugly, neither vigorous nor weak, neither traditional nor modern, neither serif nor sans serif, neither script nor printable, neither a text font nor a display font—it is rather all of the above, which makes it a more versatile typographic tool—[handwritten] characters that are well-suited for a wide variety of applications—from editorial design, [friendly] greeting cards... to branding, advertising, publicity and digital. Each glyph design combines its unique shapes and stylish ink-traps with parabolic curves. Each glyph design has been treated as an 'individual character'—the way I would treat a breathing, living, vulnerable and courteous human being; looking after each and every character as if it was my only child — bringing to light the authenticity and uniqueness of each individual, as well as my objective to bring about peace and harmony between them all as a whole. Designed with the intention of harmonizing between four scripts — Latin, Cyrillic, Greek and Hebrew; the whole family has a comprehensive set of characters—in addition to the Latin letters, the Phone typeface also has a full set of characters for Vietnamese, partially extended Cyrillic, Greek and Hebrew (sold separately). The t_t ligature is something unique to Phone, as well as the t_z ligature, among others and extras. A distinctive trait of the Phone typeface, is a high x-height combined with relatively short ascenders. The Phone typeface is in a way evoking the feeling of some Gaelic font and of the [Egyptian] Papyrus font (by Chris Costello, though, not being based on neither of those), having an exotic and an exquisite look, under the category of "Soft Fonts & Friendly Faces". Copyright Tamar Fonts/Hillel Glueck 2021 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Any unauthorized distribution of my work is strictly prohibited, and will be prosecuted; do the right thing, and do not participate in the piracy of my typefaces; if you appreciate my work, then please pay for it and help me prosper — thank you!

Note: the 'Phone Pro Hebrew' typeface, includes just the Hebrew characters of the comprehensive "Phone Pro" family font, sold separately [on this MyFonts site], so they are economical for those interested just in the Hebrew Characters. And regarding the “Phone Pro” project in general, this is what I wrote: 'PRISTINE'; this font is—neither beautiful nor ugly, neither vigorous nor weak, neither traditional nor modern, neither serif nor sans serif, neither script nor printable, neither a text font nor a display font—it is rather all of the above, which makes it a more versatile typographic tool—[handwritten] characters that are well-suited for a wide variety of applications—from editorial design, [friendly] greeting cards... to branding, advertising, publicity and digital. Each glyph design combines its unique shapes and stylish ink-traps with parabolic curves. Each glyph design has been treated as an 'individual character'—the way I would treat a breathing, living, vulnerable and courteous human being; looking after each and every character as if it was my only child — bringing to light the authenticity and uniqueness of each individual, as well as my objective to bring about peace and harmony between them all as a whole. Designed with the intention of harmonizing between four scripts — Latin, Cyrillic, Greek and Hebrew; the whole family has a comprehensive set of characters—in addition to the Latin letters, the Phone typeface also has a full set of characters for Vietnamese, partially extended Cyrillic, Greek and Hebrew (sold separately). The t_t ligature is something unique to Phone, as well as the t_z ligature, among others and extras. A distinctive trait of the Phone typeface, is a high x-height combined with relatively short ascenders. The Phone typeface is in a way evoking the feeling of some Gaelic font and of the [Egyptian] Papyrus font (by Chris Costello, though, not being based on neither of those), having an exotic and an exquisite look, under the category of "Soft Fonts & Friendly Faces".

Light and flexible, slightly retro, casual and readable, Hoofer combines 28 brush script, mono line script and sans-serif styles with ornaments into one Mega-Family. The different styles of the Hoofer Mega-family have been chosen to work together and to harmonize in a pleasing way. The Hoofer Mega-Family of fonts can be divided into three sub-families: Hoofer BRUSH subfamily: An eclectic group of five fonts. These are mainly joined scripts. Hoofer LINE subfamily: Seven mono-line scripts with joined letters in a number of weights, widths and styles. Hoofer SANS subfamily: Sixteen casual, Sans-Serif fonts. They are very readable and in a variety of weights & styles The mood of the Hoofer mega-family is light and flexible, slightly retro, casual and readable. It combines script and many sans-serif styles with ornaments into one Mega-Family. The different styles of the Hoofer Mega-family have been chosen to work together and to harmonize in a pleasing way. The Brush Sub-Family is designed for titling, packaging and display purposes, The Line Sub-Family can also be used for titling, packaging and display, however, it is less “showy”, and conveys an air of informality. The Sans Sub-Family is designed to shine as sub-heads and as body text. The wide range of Hoofline styles gives you, the designer, great flexibility in creating just the mood or impression that you want. Most of the fonts can use one or more OpenType Features. These can be accessed in a number of ways. The reason for this is that the major software producers provide different (and often conflicting) ways of accessing OpenType Features. In some cases such software manufacturers provide NO way of accessing certain OpenType Features. We have tried to remedy this by providing a highly flexible family of fonts. OPENTYPE (these OpenType features are only available in the “otf” fonts and not in the “ttf” fonts.) OpenType features that Hoofer makes use of are: Swashes (Word-Begin and Word-End Features); Alternate Numerals; and True Small Caps. ORNAMENTS In addition the Hoofer family has a font containing 94 ornaments. ALTERNATE NUMERALS You can access two sets of figures (numbers) in Hoofer Sans fonts. Both sets are tabular and lining but they differ in the height (but not the width) of the figures. The height of the alternate figures has been chosen so that they are compatible with the small caps. However, these alternate figures are available in ALL Hoofer Sans fonts, whether they feature small cap fonts or not. Hoofer has all the features usually included in a fully professional font. Language support includes all European character sets, Greek symbols and all punctuation. Opentype features include automatic replacement of some characters and discretionary replacement of stylistic alternatives.

I recently walked part of the South West Coast Path in the UK. A couple of days in the hike, I came across a small cafe and I decided to have an oat latte (I am lactose intolerant). Since it was early in the morning, the breakfast menu was out and one of the items I noticed was ‘Overnight Oats’. I normally cook my oats with some lactose free milk and water, but apparently you can soak them overnight, add fruit and nuts and eat it like that. I tried it, it’s ok, but I think I prefer the cooked version. Overnight Oats is a bit of an odd font: it is very higgledy piggledy, yet legible and unique. If you want something out of the ordinary, then this may be your font!

Envoy is a serif type inspired primarily by Garalde oldstyle types like those of Claude Garamond. As such, it is particularly well suited for book and magazine text. Characteristic details more typical of Venetian oldstyle faces serve to give Envoy just a bit more personality. The base family includes regular, italic, bold, bold italic and small capitals. Expert sets add ligatures and alternate letterforms. Display sets include letterforms customized for titling. Originally designed in 1995 and 1996, for the 1996 Morisawa International Typeface Design Competition, Envoy was later revived, completed and publicly released in 1998. During the initial design, the family was known as Truman in honor of Northeast Missouri State University becoming Truman State University, but the name was changed to Envoy prior to entry in the competition.

The basis for Series A Signage JNL is Highway Gothic; a type style design formally known as the FHWA Series. The font was developed by the United States Federal Highway Administration, and originally consisted of only capital letters and figures. Each Letter designation represented a character width from "A" (condensed) to "F" (wide). Due to poor visibility at high speeds, Series "A" was discontinued. At one point lower case characters were added to the various widths of the design, but this typeface revival is based on the original guidelines specified in the 1948 (reprinted 1952) book "Standard Alphabets for Highway Signs" [this was the original name for the FHWA series fonts preceding the eventual name change to Highway Gothic]. Unlike the original, Series A Signage JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Years ago, by happenstance, designers Nancy Mazzei and Brian Kelly found an old decrepit typewriter in an abandoned lot with tall grass in Brooklyn. They kept it around their apartment for two years. Then one day they decided that it was time to move and they planned to throw the old typewriter away. But it was so beautiful they wanted to keep at least a part of it. So they decided on keeping the keys. They kept the keys in a brown bag until one fine day the keys were introduced to a camera. It was a match made in heaven that resulted in some beautiful quirky images of typewriter keys. These images were the inspiration for Backspacer. They were scanned, traced and turned into a working typeface by Zuzana Licko.

This set of letters and ornaments is loosely based on on a typeface that was offered by the DeVinne Press at the turn of the century. We can speculate from its name that this type was used as a display font to try to equate the look of letters on 15th and ­16th century heraldic cartouches, seals, stamps, medals and other inscriptional lettering. The sample was digitized with an “antiqued” outline to further enhance this ancient inscriptional theme. The letters were then grouped in the font with the more traditional Roman letters as the capitals and the Lombardic forms as the miniscules. The original type sample contained some unusual 15th century inscriptional numbers which have been included as extras in the font so the user the has the option to create an authentic looking design.

During the spring of 2006, while creating this typeface, I was reading Praying For Gil Hodges, by Tom Oliphant, who grew up a Brooklyn Dodgers fan. I grew up a Los Angeles Dodgers fan. My mother worked as secretary to the president of the old Triple A LA Angels Baseball Team. In 1952 when she was pregnant with me, she left the team. They gave her an autographed baseball and a puppy named Angel. That's the dog I grew up with. Toward the end of the book the author talks about Gil Hodges' favorite ballplayer, a slugger for the LA Angels, Jigger Statz. I thought, could it be? My mother died two years ago and I got the team baseball. Sure enough, the first name after the dedication to my mother was Jigger Statz.

Sabon was designed by Jan Tschichold and released in 1967. Sabon was created in response to the specific needs of a group of German printers who wanted a typeface that would be identical in form when produced by three different metal-casting technologies. Named after Jacques Sabon, a sixteenth century typefounder whose widow married another typefounder, Konrad Berner, who is credited with issuing the first typefounder's specimen sheet. Several types on the sheet were attributed to Claude Garamond, and one of these served Tschichold as the source for Sabon roman. The italic was based on another face on Berner's sheet, cut by Robert Granjon. Tschichold's skillful adaptation of these old style faces has produced an elegant and workmanlike book face. The Sabon font family is a popular choice for setting text.

Opinion varies regarding the role of Claude Garamond (ca. 1480–1561) in the development of the Old Face font, Garamond. What is accepted is the influence this font had on other typeface developments from the time of its creation to the present. Garamond, or Garamont, is related to the alphabet of Claude Garamond (1480–1561) as well as to the work of Jean Jannon (1580–1635 or 1658), much of which was attributed to Garamond. In comparison to the earlier Italian font forms, Garamond has finer serifs and a generally more elegant image. The Garamond of Jean Jannon was introduced at the Paris World’s Fair in 1900 as “Original Garamond”, whereafter many font foundries began to cast similar types. Simoncini Garamond was designed by Francesco Simoncini to be true to the Original.

Tall, thin and elegant, Marian Churchland’s fonts are very much like her.. and now available from those awfully nice chaps at Comicraft to allow you to pretend that you are too! Marian Churchland was born in Canada in 1982, and was raised on a strict diet of fine literature and epic fantasy video games. She has a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies (English Literature and Visual Arts) from the University of British Columbia, and has been doing professional illustration work, including book covers and magazine articles, since she was 17. Last year, she became the first woman to solo-illustrate a CONAN story, and this year she’s illustrating three issues of ELEPHANTMEN for Image Comics. Artwork by Marian Churchland from Elephantmen #20. See the families related to Marian Churchland Journal: Marian Churchland .

ITC Ironwork is the work of Serge Pichii, who was inspired by a piece of decorative lettering done by Jan Tschichold in the early 1920s. Tschichold had interlocked a series of rough sans serif letters and embellished them with scattered decorative elements. The original was of only capital letters, touching and overlapping like an ironwork gate made of letters. Pichii completed the typeface with lowercase forms and smoothed the edges. The scrolls of the capitals were extended to the lowercase and Pichii based them on iron scrollwork he found in Vienna and Prague. A lot of attention was paid to the elements of the typeface in order to 'smooth out' and balance proportional relations between the elements," says Pichii. ITC Ironwork is great for signage and display but also works well in short texts."

Millie is a stressed, geometric script who spends her days as industrial lettering and her nights paired with blackletter on the patches of motorcycle gangs. Millie was weighted by the conventions of broad nib calligraphy, inspired by the Milwaukee Tools logo, and finds herself best used in logos and titles. She was designed to be used on about a 20 degree angle, though she looks just fine on a level plane. By using opentype, many ligatures, and two sets of stylistic alternates, Millie was developed to look great with any string of letters. Access the first stylistic set for a disconnected script look, and the second set for even more connections and fluid script than standard. Millie Round takes the edge off a bit, giving the entire set a more approachable and versatile feel.

Original type work designed in unconventional technique by type and graphic designer Yuri Gulitov. The shapes of signs were built up in a very specific routine. At the first stage signs were drawn on the black sheets of paper by the PVA adhesive, then a white sheets was placed above, and finally after some time the white sheets were torn off. The scraps of white paper presented the signs. Inverse style shows hypothetic result of tearing off the black sheets. The style together or separately can be used in display and advertizing works for demonstration of fight between the forces of good and evil or vice versa. Analog version of the font was awarded by diploma on Third International Biennale of Graphic Design “Golden Bee”. Digital version was released by ParaType in 2008.

Electrostatic JNL was inspired by the 1930s lettering for radio station WMCA in New York City. It was found as part of an ad for the station in a 1932 radio broadcasting trade magazine. WMCA went on the air Feb. 6, 1925. According to Wikipedia, the "MCA" call letters stood for the Hotel McAlpin, where the station's original studio and transmitter were located. "W" is the call sign prefix for all broadcast stations East of the Mississippi River; with the exception of KDKA (Pittsburgh), which was the nation's first commercial radio station. This bold novelty typeface with lightning bolds intersecting the characters can be used to represent anything from electricity to stormy days; power generators to brute force and so forth. Electrostatic JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Architype Crouwel is a collection of typefaces created in collaboration with Wim Crouwel, following his agreement with The Foundry, to recreate his experimental alphabets as digital fonts. Crouwel's most recognized work was for the Van Abbe and Stedelijk museums (1954 –72) where he established his reputation for radical, grid-based design. The Fodor letterforms were created for the magazine published by Museum Fodor, Amsterdam. To save cost it was designed to be ‘typeset’ on their own electric typewriter. The resulting monospaced effect was combined with a background of orange overlaid with pink dots that provided a page grid to align the text to. The title set on the dot matrix formed the 'system' for construction of the ‘digital effect’ letterforms. Now Architype Fodor recreates these letterforms as a truly digital font.

The vintage display font family Vernyhora. The typeface is intended to be used in those places where the letters when it is necessary to transmit the strong character, stability and historicity. The font has got 6 weights. It contains extended Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. It also consists of the alternative set of characters from the old Ukrainian alphabet. It can be used for the state institutions names. It was planned to be a font of old cities and towns. From the very beginning the font was created in order to execute signboards at the entrance of towns. For the font creation the author was inspired by the graphic designers of the early 20th century, such as Georgiy Narbut and Fedir Krychevs'kyi. From the Ukrainian language the font name is translated into English as mountains mover.

Cake Shop has a lengthy history. Originally designed during the Eighties by Aussie artist David Art Wales, the font was inspired by the awkward but charming hand-lettered signs in a Maltese cake shop near his Sydney home. "These signs were hand-drawn by someone who clearly had no experience but who'd really put their heart and soul into the job. There was a real sincerity to the characters that I wanted to capture." For a brief time during the early Nineties, MTV used Cake Shop for all their on-air interstitials. Since then, it's become a go-to font for everything from children's books to album covers and ice cream branding. In a recent update, Wales added airier spacing to more closely resemble the original signs the font was based on.

Smart, legible and elegant, Gravesend Sans is a based on the unique typeface used for the iconic grass-green signage for the Southern Railway. In existence from 1923 to 1948, when the network was nationalised, the Southern Railway linked London with the Channel ports, South West England, the South coast resorts and Kent. The same design was also used for the ‘hawkeye’ signs on the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, differentiated by black letters on a yellow background. Reference for each letter was taken from vintage ‘target’ station nameplates and other platform signage. The rarest letters were the Q, seen in Queens Road Battersea, the X, seen in East Brixton, and the Z, used in Maze Hill, site of an infamous train crash in 1958. Being hand-made, the letters often differ in width and thickness. There was no lower case. The Bluebell Railway, a heritage steam line, runs over part of the old Southern Railway network and uses a very similar type. The design of the numbers differed considerably, but here have been taken from the Device 112 Hours font Smokebox. As well identifying platforms, they were used on the front of the steam engine’s smokebox, hence the name, and stylistically are more in keeping with the letters than some of the squarer versions that can be seen in old photographs. William Caslon IV is credited with the first Latin sans-serif type, shown in a 1816 Caslon specimen book. ‘Two Lines English Egyptian’, as it was called, was caps-only, and there are several other correlations between that type design and this one. Includes a selection of authentic arrows and manicules, plus abbreviated ligatures such as ‘St.’ (Saint or Street) ‘Rd.’ (Road) and ‘Jn.’ (Junction). The Cameo version includes many graphic banner elements that can be freely combined.

Type designers are crazy people. Not crazy in the sense that they think we are Napoleon, but in the sense that the sky can be falling, wars tearing the world apart, disasters splitting the very ground we walk on, plagues circling continents to pick victims randomly, yet we will still perform our ever optimistic task of making some little spot of the world more appealing to the human eye. We ought to be proud of ourselves, I believe. Optimism is hard to come by these days. Regardless of our own personal reasons for doing what we do, the very thing we do is in itself an act of optimism and belief in the inherent beauty that exists within humanity. As recently as ten years ago, I wouldn't have been able to choose the amazing obscure profession I now have, wouldn't have been able to be humbled by the history that falls into my hands and slides in front of my eyes every day, wouldn't have been able to live and work across previously impenetrable cultural lines as I do now, and wouldn't have been able to raise my glass of Malbeck wine to toast every type designer who was before me, is with me, and will be after me. As recently as ten years ago, I wouldn't have been able to mean these words as I wrote them: It’s a small world. Yes, it is a small world, and a wonderfully complex one too. With so much information drowning our senses by the minute, it has become difficult to find clear meaning in almost anything. Something throughout the day is bound to make us feel even smaller in this small world. Most of us find comfort in a routine. Some of us find extended families. But in the end we are all Eleanor Rigbys, lonely on the inside and waiting for a miracle to come. If a miracle can make the world small, another one can perhaps give us meaning. And sometimes a miracle happens for a split second, then gets buried until a crazy type designer finds it. I was on my honeymoon in New York City when I first stumbled upon the letters that eventually started this Affair. A simple, content tourist walking down the streets formerly unknown to me except through pop music and film references. Browsing the shops of the city that made Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, and a thousand other artists. Trying to chase away the tourist mentality, wondering what it would be like to actually live in the city of a billion tiny lights. Tourists don't go to libraries in foreign cities. So I walked into one. Two hours later I wasn't in New York anymore. I wasn't anywhere substantial. I was the crazy type designer at the apex of insanity. La La Land, alphabet heaven, curves and twirls and loops and swashes, ribbons and bows and naked letters. I'm probably not the very first person on this planet to be seduced into starting an Affair while on his honeymoon, but it is something to tease my better half about once in a while. To this day I can't decide if I actually found the worn book, or if the book itself called for me. Its spine was nothing special, sitting on a shelf, tightly flanked by similar spines on either side. Yet it was the only one I picked off that shelf. And I looked at only one page in it before walking to the photocopier and cheating it with an Argentine coin, since I didn't have the American quarter it wanted. That was the beginning. I am now writing this after the Affair is over. And it was an Affair to remember, to pull a phrase. Right now, long after I have drawn and digitized and tested this alphabet, and long after I saw what some of this generation’s type designers saw in it, I have the luxury to speculate on what Affair really is, what made me begin and finish it, what cultural expressions it has, and so on. But in all honesty it wasn't like that. Much like in my Ministry Script experience, I was a driven man, a lover walking the ledge, an infatuated student following the instructions of his teacher while seeing her as a perfect angel. I am not exaggerating when I say that the letters themselves told me how to extend them. I was exploited by an alphabet, and it felt great. Unlike my experience with Ministry Script, where the objective was to push the technology to its limits, this Affair felt like the most natural and casual sequence of processions in the world – my hand following the grid, the grid following what my hand had already done – a circle of creation contained in one square computer cell, then doing it all over again. By contrast, it was the lousiest feeling in the world when I finally reached the conclusion that the Affair was done. What would I do now? Would any commitment I make from now on constitute a betrayal of these past precious months? I'm largely over all that now, of course. I like to think I'm a better man now because of the experience. Affair is an enormous, intricately calligraphic OpenType font based on a 9x9 photocopy of a page from a 1950s lettering book. In any calligraphic font, the global parameters for developing the characters are usually quite volatile and hard to pin down, but in this case it was particularly difficult because the photocopy was too gray and the letters were of different sizes, very intertwined and scan-impossible. So finishing the first few characters in order to establish the global rhythm was quite a long process, after which the work became a unique soothing, numbing routine by which I will always remember this Affair. The result of all the work, at least to the eyes of this crazy designer, is 1950s American lettering with a very Argentine wrapper. My Affair is infused with the spirit of filete, dulce de leche, yerba mate, and Carlos Gardel. Upon finishing the font I was fortunate enough that a few of my colleagues, great type designers and probably much saner than I am, agreed to show me how they envision my Affair in action. The beauty they showed me makes me feel small and yearn for the world to be even smaller now – at least small enough so that my international colleagues and I can meet and exchange stories over a good parrilla. These people, whose kindness is very deserving of my gratitude, and whose beautiful art is very deserving of your appreciation, are in no particular order: Corey Holms, Mariano Lopez Hiriart, Xavier Dupré, Alejandro Ros, Rebecca Alaccari, Laura Meseguer, Neil Summerour, Eduardo Manso, and the Doma group. You can see how they envisioned using Affair in the section of this booklet entitled A Foreign Affair. The rest of this booklet contains all the obligatory technical details that should come with a font this massive. I hope this Affair can bring you as much peace and satisfaction as it brought me, and I hope it can help your imagination soar like mine did when I was doing my duty for beauty.