Everyone likes getting a handwritten letter. At least, they would if anyone still hand wrote letters. We heard a story about a type designer who gets a Christmas card from his niece. He’s been out of touch with her for years and is both delighted and surprised to receive a handwritten note. His first thought is “How sweet; how very nice to hear from her.” His second thought is,”Great font potential; I could use this.” And he did. Carissa has a fresh, spontaneous feel, with a wonderful use of uppercase letters (B and R, etc.) within the lower case. Useful as a personal font or for an off-beat menu...

Octopuss is an energetic titling typeface designed in 1970 by Colin Brignall for Letraset dry transfer sheets. Brignall expanded the basic alphabet with an outline variation with a shadow, which makes the typeface look three dimensional, almost like it is floating. Octopuss font displays the unmistakable signs of the typefaces of the 1970s, as do Countdown and Harlow, also designed by Brignall. The circular strokes of the capitals that drop well under the base line are striking and unique. Because of the small white spaces of its lower case letters, the rounded, robust Octopuss is meant exclusively as a headline font and should be set in large point sizes.

Mijas Ultra font was designed specially as a headlines and caption text for advertising, packaging and Publishing design. It has strong visual impact, a persuasive personality and seduction appeal throughout its organic shapes. This versatile typeface is quite useful for creating logotypes, a variety of alternates and swash tails in three different styles and length were drawn for most letters, plenty of vowel-focused ligatures, it covers all Latin-based languages. Please refer to quick reference manual included. Mijas is a little white town located at a mountainside above the blue Mediterranean Sea, in the heart of the Costa del Sol. It has high contrast, small counterforms and friendly climate.

Price Tags JNL is a multi-use dingbat font. Along with over twenty nostalgic price tags, there is a set of individual numbers [1 thru 0 keys] and number pairs [A-T and a-i keys] for creating old-style white-on-black price tags. Blank end caps are available on the parenthesis keys, the decimal point is on the period key, catch words FOR, DOZEN and EACH are on the left and right arrows and right brace respectively, and the dollars and cents marks are on the dollar and hyphen keys. You'll even find a few extras placed upon the bracket and left brace keys.

Weights and Measures is a great title font that is simple and elegant. It is bold without being overpowering. This style was a favorite for me as I made posters for school projects, wrote notes to friends, and made decorative labels. This font fully supports the following languages: Bulgarian, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish. If your language is not listed, or if I've missed a character in a language I claim to support, please contact me! I will be happy to add characters as needed, and will consider supporting more languages if there is interest.

Chilango is a beautiful new typeface based on the gorgeous hand-painted street signs of Mexico City.., It come with 7 weights and a unique Italic family. Throughout Mexico City, from the Centro Historic (Zocalo) through La Condessa, Polanco and Guerrero - from La Roma to San Rafael to Atlampa to Lomas, you can be sure to see the iconic hand painted blue with white lettered street signs wherever you go. It is an exuberant and flourishing font that represents this fabulous flourishing city to its core. It is a historical one, classy and stylish and deeply routed in the curvature and designs of the Spanish heritage.

Ahkio is a brushed disconnected script family of 5 fonts. Ahkio’s roots are in 1930s sign painting and showcard lettering but with a modern and individual twist. Main characteristics are soft, rounded forms and a bit curved stems. Ahkio is a friendly and gentle font that suits well in titles, packages, logos and for example posters. 5 weights makes Ahkio a versatile font that gives you a possibility to add contrast and interest to your typography. Ahkio includes black and white manicules. You can use them easily with OpenType options. Just choose Stylistic set 1 and make sure Standard ligatures are on. Then just type: >> for Blackmaniculeright >> for Whitemaniculeright

The marker has been sitting in your pen drawer for years. You can't bring yourself to throw it out, because it's the best marker in the world; but it has become worn and frayed, and you can't bring yourself to use it, either. But today you have just the project for the best bad marker in the world, and you take it from the drawer, remove the cap, and notice with glee that time has accumulated a perfect supply of ink in the frayed tip. You bring it down on the pristine white paper in front of you, and magic begins to trace itself on the page...

Emil Bertell's Bayamo is a contemporary, digital take on the brush script tradition. It echoes the loose forms and energetic personality of sign painted letters, tapping into the current nostalgia for hand-drawn type. “I think most script fonts nowadays are either some kind of modern calligraphy, or synthetic/mechanical scripts,” says Bertell. “This one leans more towards a classic American sign painting tradition.” Contextual alternates ensure that lowercase characters change depending what's next to them, mimicking the more varied word shapes created by sign writers. Well suited for branding projects, packaging and headlines, Bayamo also pairs well with strong sans serif, and other typefaces with angular forms.

Bauhaus Geometric, economical, functional... The good, wholesome, modernist values that once fired up the tutors and students of the Bauhaus became the inspiration for FS Dillon after an exploration of the work of the pre-war art and design powerhouse in the Fontsmith studio. The font combines simplicity and directness with a characteristic Fontsmith warmth. Letterforms are compact, with a generous x-height, and built for maximum clarity and impact. The Bauhaus sought beauty through function. FS Dillon achieves it. Made for TV The weights of fonts for TV sometimes have to be adjusted so as not to “blow” on-screen. FS Dillon was originally drawn for the on-screen presentation branding of Film Four, whose primary colour was red. Black type on a red background looks heavier than white, so Dillon needed two weights that would allow white and black type to be used together, looking balanced and equal. Type design is an organic process. Years after developing FS Dillon, we revisited it, redrawing elements and adding italics to maintain consistency. Olympic You don’t get a much higher confirmation of the functional fitness of a typeface than to have it selected to guide visitors around an Olympic complex. FS Dillon was selected as the font for signage at some of the key venues at the London 2012 Olympic Park, helping to get spectators, athletes and officials from all over the world to their seats and starting blocks on time.

This set of decorated initial letters was inspired by those used in 1510 in Nancy (France, Lorraine) for printing of "Recueil ou croniques des hystoires des royaulmes d'Austrasie ou France orientale[...]" Author Symphorien Champion, unknown printer. There were three sorts of initials family, but only one complete and clear, except a very few characters. The printer used some letters to represent others, as V, turned over to make a A, D to make a Q, M for E, So, the reconstruction was a little less difficult. Thorn, Eth, L slash and O slash were also added. The original font's letters was only drawn in white on a black background only, but it was tempting to propose a negative version in black on white. A few letters have multiple appearance, but only the A was clear enough to be reproduced. It can be used as variously as web-site titles, posters and flyer design, publishing texts looking like ancient ones, or greeting cards, all various sorts of presentations, as a very decorative, elegant and luxurious additional font... This font supports strong enlargements revealing its fine details and remaining very smart. Its original medieval height is about one inch equivalent to about three to four lines of characters. This font may be used with all our blackletter fonts, but as well with "1543 Humane Jenson", "1557 Italic" and "1742 Civilite", without any fear about anachronism.

The island of Fuerteventura is more known for its white sand beaches and windsurf-friendly constant winds than for its typographic marvels. Still, it's on the walls of a ballroom next to its white-sand beaches that Debora Manetti found the hand-painted letterforms that she took as inspiration for her typeface Sala de Fiestas. The resulting font was a condensed sans serif full of curious details and a jumpy latino vibe that many years after still keeps its freshness and vernacular charme. Francesco Canovaro took the original typeface as a starting point for a grand tour into sign-painter aesthetics, developing a reboot of the original into a new type family: Salad. While being faithful to the original proportions and feeling, Salad provides extreme versatility through its five-weights range, its extended charset and its set of Open Type features including stylistic sets, alternates, positional numerals, small capitals and case sensitive forms. While the roman family with its italic counterpart provide a good workhorse tool for informal branding, packaging and editorial projects, the interlocking and the inline weights add additional possibilities for display purposes. This is enriched by the inclusion in the typeface of a set hand-drawn decorative dingbats that further complement the sign painting vibe of the family. All Zetafonts expertise in handmade lettering, typographic design and water sports has been put to test to assure Salad is the best typographical alternative to a a trip to Canary Islands!

You wrote on your school notebooks, didn't you. Of course, just about everyone did. And those that didn't are probably in therapy trying to overcome the repression and guilt. Balloon letters are fun, easy to draw and have a light-hearted presence. With little autonomy, what young person can resist the opportunity to make a public, personal statement on their notebook. Guess what! Adults do it too - with our cars, our houses, our toys, our accessories and so on. And how "grown-up" are we really? Anyway, my niece, Cori, made this nice, colorful, hand-drawn birthday card. It was so vibrant and fun - in warm circus colors - that I could not resist making it into a font. Use it for positive, fun stuff, stuff with a light touch - an invitation for an informal party perhaps, but probably not a formal dinner at the White House. This font is not comfortable in a bowtie. But don't be fooled. Casual as Cori is, you can set at least twelve major European languages with it, in addition to English: Albanian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish. Cori Valentine adds a decorative Valentine border to the upper case of Cori. By leaving out the bow in the upper center of the border we were able to fit the border around the accented caps. Similarly, we omitted the butterfly for the Ccedilla glyph. Blank versions of the regular border & the bowless border are provided at positions 135 & 137 in case you want to put a border around your signature or something like that. Just for reference, the letterforms for Cori Valentine are 75% the size as the regular Cori font. We would like to assure you that it is permissible to use Cori Valentine to create a romantic card, flyer or note during any month with less the 32 days.

Common use(s) of Comicraft's All-new, All-different SENTINEL font include FACTOR-X, X-MAN, GENERATION NEXT and X-CALIBRE. Possible Side Effects: This font should not be used if you are trapped in a world you never made or a world full of people that hate and fear you. Prolonged exposure to this font during an Age of Apocalypse may cause fatigue, muscle soreness, first degree burns and immobility. Contraindications in Homo Superior may manifest as an outbreak of large purple automatons. Interactions: Before using this font in either regular or bold doses, notify your doctor of any recent exposure to mechanoids, synthezoids or paranoid androids. Reprogrammed Sentinel has improved spacing and kerning, Western & Central European accents, alternate lettershapes, and a new Interlocking Mode with over 100 connecting letter combinations!

Murality is a cartoon graffiti typeface. The letters are fun and friendly, with a happy personality and optimistic quirkiness. A street sans-serif style, Murality is drawn and created by Mans Greback, and is the perfect combination of cool and childish typography. This hip-hop styled comic typeface family consists of six styles: Regular, Thin, Black, Black Thin, Outline, Shadow The font is built with advanced OpenType functionality and has a guaranteed top-notch quality, containing stylistic and contextual alternates, ligatures and more features; all to give you full control and customizability. It has extensive lingual support, covering all Latin-based languages, from North Europe to South Africa, from America to South-East Asia. It contains all characters and symbols you'll ever need, including all punctuation and numbers.

Rocket Pop and Rocket Pop Outline are influenced by product packaging and cereal box art from the 1960's and 1970's. The fonts will work as companions or separate. Best used over 36pt as a headline display face, these fonts will bring a bold playfulness to any project where a vintage or retro style is in the concept. The style reflects the era when things were indeed, mad, where men (and some women) did crazy art for vinyl records, food packaging and kiddie products. Sugar frosted blue donut cereal is yummy for your tummy like... Rocket Pop and Rocket Pop Outline. Buy both and get the discount! Watch for the Cerealboxx Set coming soon that will include the astroluxtype fonts, Sugarbang! Koo Koo Puff and Rocket Pop together in one box.

Mauritz is a brush script typeface. A speedy handwriting, Mauritz was drawn and created by Mans Greback in 2021 to be the ultimate set of wild-style scripts for logotypes and branding. This calligraphy family consists of 10 high-quality fonts in a great variety of weights and styles: Mauritz Thin, Light, Regular, Bold and Black, and each one as Italic. The font is built with advanced OpenType functionality and has a guaranteed top-notch quality, containing stylistic and contextual alternates, ligatures and more features; all to give you full control and customizability. It has extensive lingual support, covering all Latin-based languages, from North Europe to South Africa, from America to South-East Asia. It contains all characters and symbols you'll ever need, including all punctuation and numbers.

Arando Script is a retro script typeface. A perfected calligraphy with uniquely beautiful letterforms, Arando Script is a professional quality handwriting font family. Drawn and created by Mans Greback in 2022, it is perfect for a formal restaurant headline or feminine logotype design. Arando Script is provided in four styles: Regular, Bold, Italic and Bold Italic, which compliment each other and maximise your options and design experience. The font is built with advanced OpenType functionality and has a guaranteed top-notch quality, containing stylistic and contextual alternates, ligatures and more features; all to give you full control and customizability. It has extensive lingual support, covering all Latin-based languages, from Northern Europe to South Africa, from America to South-East Asia. It contains all characters and symbols you'll ever need, including all punctuation and numbers.

World Series is a retro script typeface. Drawn and created by Mans Greback in 2021, this calligraphic lettering has a unique brush style and a confident appearance. Its vintage theme does well as a logotype or any typographic art that needs to look custom made. Use underscore _ to create swashes. Example: Baseballer_ Use multiple underscores to make swashes of different lengths. (Download required) The font is built with advanced OpenType functionality and has a guaranteed top-notch quality, containing stylistic and contextual alternates, ligatures and more features; all to give you full control and customizability. It has extensive lingual support, covering all Latin-based languages, from North Europa to South Africa, from America to South-East Asia. It contains all characters and symbols you'll ever need, including all punctuation and numbers.

Space Throne is a technological sci-fi typeface drawn and created by Mans Greback between 2018 and 2021. A rough digital typeface, this futuristic lettering has a high-tech look with a touch of apocalyptic decay. Space Throne is a LCD cyberpunk typeface family consisting of four styles: In addition to the eroded Regular style, it has the clean weights Thin, Medium and Bold. The font is built with advanced OpenType functionality and has a guaranteed top-notch quality, containing stylistic and contextual alternates, ligatures and more features; all to give you full control and customizability. It has extensive lingual support, covering all Latin-based languages, from North Europe to South Africa, from America to South-East Asia. It contains all characters and symbols you'll ever need, including all punctuation and numbers.

TOUCHDOWN! This is not a Hoax, not a What If, not an Imaginary Font! The Eagle has Landed... Comicraft's latest manned mission: Space Age Faces for Space Age Spaces! Our Apollo Modules have settled in the moondust and our Astronauts are buckled up in the Rover collecting little rocks and looking for suitable spots to play golf. We invested billions and billions of dollars to send these fonts into space using the largest and most powerful rockets ever built, and rest assured, our Orbiter is coated with a phenolic epoxy resin ablative heatshield to protect you for your journey back to Earth. Features: Six fonts (Modular, Modular-Bold, Orbiter, Orbiter-Bold, Rover, Rover-Bold) with upper and lower case characters. Opentype version of Orbiter also includes 52 auto-ligatures.

Largelake is a bold logotype script typeface. Drawn and created by Mans Greback in 2021, this lettering has a colourful character and confidence. It has the appearance of a classic restaurant or hotel sign, or logo for a casino or sports event. Use multiple underscores to make swashes of different styles and lengths. Example: Fisher____ (Download required.) The font is built with advanced OpenType functionality and has a guaranteed top-notch quality, containing stylistic and contextual alternates, ligatures and more features; all to give you full control and customizability. It has extensive lingual support, covering all Latin-based languages, from North Europa to South Africa, from America to South-East Asia. It contains all characters and symbols you'll ever need, including all punctuation and numbers, ensuring it works great for big cats and small businesses.

Hello good people. introducing our new font 'Piedmond' This time we wanted to create a gallant signature font. Inspired by men's hand strokes, with a decisive pattern, each glyph is formed through the pressing of the pen, the orientation of the shape is almost constant with the direction of the pattern that continues to point forward and ends with a strong pressing of the pen. We call it the masculine signature type, reflecting a confident attitude, a definite decision and full confidence. We design this font for modern product branding, not only for men, but women also love this masculine side. This font is equipped with swashes, alternates and additional ligatures for the lowercase. By using this font, it will give your brand more confidence to appear wider. Thanks

Rocket Pop Outline and Rocket Pop are influenced by product packaging and cereal box art from the 1960’s and 1970’s. The fonts will work as companions or separate. Best used over 36pt as a headline display face, these fonts will bring a bold playfulness to any project where a vintage or retro style is in the concept. The style reflects the era when things were indeed, mad, where men (and some women) did crazy art for vinyl records, food packaging and kiddie products. This outline font will bring a snap and crackle and a pop to any of your vintage design projects. Watch for the Cerealboxx Set coming soon that will include the astroluxtype fonts, Sugarbang! Koo Koo Puff and Rocket Pop together in one delicious box.

Ransite Medieval is a bold blackletter typeface. Put together and refined by Mans Greback in 2022, this Old-English style lettering is drawn based on studies of multiple historical documents and typographic resources. With black calligraphy strokes, this heavy middle ages typeface is decorative but clean and clear. Ransite Medieval is provided in four styles: Regular, Bold, Italic and Bold Italic Use it for a logotype or in a medieval context where you want a genuine, yet legible, typography. The font is built with OpenType functionality and has a guaranteed top-notch quality. It has extensive lingual support, covering all Latin-based languages, from North Europa to South Africa, from America to South-East Asia. It contains all characters and symbols you'll ever need, including all punctuation and numbers.

What does a 1932 movie about a love affair between a circus' trapeze artist and a sideshow "little person" have to do with the 1960s counter-culture? They both share some commonalities. The title card for Tod Browning's "Freaks" inspired the lettering design for Hippie Freak JNL. It's in a retro style that was embraced by the youth movement that had its epicenter in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Circus performers with birth defect abnormalities were displayed in what was referred to as "freak shows"; while young men with long hair and beards who sought peace, love and an end to the war in Vietnam were commonly referred to as "hippie freaks". As the saying goes "the more things change, the more they stay the same".

S P O I L E R A L E R T ! We don't want to be a drag, a wet blanket or a spoilsport, but we're here to tell you that everything before “but” is bulls*it! Yep, if you're a merrymaker, a carouser, a jester, a reveler or a live wire, we're here to poop your party with our latest knicker-twister, KILLJOY! Call us cynics, call us crabs, grouches, grumpy old men, sourpusses or bores, but we're the kind of Killjoys who just have to make some noise... sound effects (sic) everybody, so listen up even if you can't handle the truth... and here’s OUR truth; Keep Calm and be a Fabulous Killjoy! Yes, it’s easy to be mean -- but why should anybody else have all the fun? Or all the fonts?

Ekorre is a professional serif typeface. Drawn and created by Mans Greback in 2021, this creative font family has a vivid retro style and a strong personality, and is constructed with soft corners and flowing shapes. The letterforms express empathy, while retaining seriousness. It is provided in six complementing high-quality styles: Ekorre Regular, Ekorre Bold, Ekorre Black and each one as Italic. Ekorre is built with advanced OpenType functionality and has a guaranteed top-notch quality, containing stylistic alternates, ligatures and more features; all to give you full control and customizability. It has extensive lingual support, covering all Latin-based languages, from North Europa to South Africa, from America to South-East Asia. It contains all characters and symbols you'll ever need, including all punctuation and numbers.

The Comic Sans® typeface, one of Microsoft's most popular designs, has received a makeover courtesy of Monotype Imaging. The company has introduced the four-font Comic Sans Pro family of typefaces. Featuring elements such as speech bubbles and cartoon dingbats, Comic Sans Pro extends the versatility of the original Comic Sans, designed by Vincent Connare for Microsoft in 1994. Hats off to Monotype Imaging for enlivening Comic Sans and getting it back to its roots as a comic book lettering face. Now everyone can write with more panache - and look even more like a pro using swashes, small caps and other typographic embellishments," said Connare. "Every day, millions of people rely on Comic Sans for countless applications ranging from scrapbooking to school projects," said Allan Haley, director of words and letters at Monotype Imaging. "Comic Sans is also a favorite in professional environments, used in medical information, instructions, ambulance signage, college exams, corporate mission statements and executive reprimands - even public letters from sports team owners to their fans. Breaking up with your spouse? Why not write a letter in Comic Sans Pro, embellished with a typographic whack!, pow! or bam! Comic Sans is everywhere, and now it's even better." The Comic Sans Pro family includes regular and bold fonts, in addition to two new italic and bold italic fonts drawn by Monotype Imaging's Terrance Weinzierl. "Our aim is to put the 'fun' back in 'functional.' We can't wait to see Comic Sans Pro used in everything from second wedding announcements to warning labels," said Weinzierl. "Long live Comic Sans!" Comic Sans Pro contains a versatile range of typographic features including swashes, small caps, ornaments, old style figures and stylistic alternates - all supported by the OpenType® font format. OpenType-savvy applications, such as Adobe® Creative Suite®, QuarkXPress® or Mellel™ software are required to access these features. Comic Sans Pro can also be used in new versions of Microsoft® Office including Microsoft Word 2010 and Microsoft Publisher 2010. In addition, Comic Sans Pro includes a set of ornaments and symbols, including speech bubbles, onomatopoeia and dingbats, pre-sized to work well as bullets."

In the bustling world of rough, grungy typography, there’s one typeface that stands out among the rest—Chinese Rocks. This iconic typeface draws inspiration from the hand-cut rubber-stamp writing found on Chinese export crates from the twentieth century. It’s a typeface that captures the raw, unpolished energy of the streets and infuses it into your messaging. What sets Chinese Rocks apart is its artisanal, handcrafted quality. Each letter is carefully carved to give your words a unique, personal touch that cannot be replicated by any other font. With Chinese Rocks, your text takes on a casual, laid-back vibe that speaks to the rawness and authenticity of modern culture. This versatile font comes in sixteen different styles, including Fat, Condensed, and Shaded. Each variation offers a different take on the classic Chinese Rocks style, allowing you to tailor your messaging to fit any occasion or application. Whether you’re looking to make a bold statement or add a touch of personality to your branding, Chinese Rocks has you covered. So why settle for a generic font that doesn’t capture your essence? Chinese Rocks is the typeface that captures your personality and turns your words into art. Try it out today and discover the power of authentic, handcrafted typography. Most Latin-based European writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aromanian, Aymara, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kurdish (Latin), Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Moldovan, Montenegrin, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Ossetian (Latin), Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Sami, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wolof, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec Zulu and Zuni.

The unusual name for this Deco style typeface comes from the playful and pun-laden 1960s Rocky & Bullwinkle TV show. It is the name of the newspaper in the mythical town of Frostbite Falls, MN, home of the two cartoon stars. The name, Picayune Intelligence, literally means “pretty dumb”, but we don’t think that describes Nick’s competent design at all. It is comforting to know that someone is still watching quality television.

ITC Johnston is the result of the combined talents of Dave Farey and Richard Dawson, based on the work of Edward Johnston. In developing ITC Johnston, says London type designer Dave Farey, he did “lots of research on not only the face but the man.” Edward Johnston was something of an eccentric, “famous for sitting in a deck chair and carrying toast in his pockets.” (The deck chair was his preferred furniture in his own living room; the toast was so that he’d always have sustenance near at hand.) Johnston was also almost single-handedly responsible, early in this century, for the revival in Britain of the Renaissance calligraphic tradition of the chancery italic. His book Writing & Illuminating, & Lettering (with its peculiar extraneous comma in the title) is a classic on its subject, and his influence on his contemporaries was tremendous. He is perhaps best remembered, however, for the alphabet that he designed in 1916 for the London Underground Railway (now London Transport), which was based on his original “block letter” model. Johnston’s letters were constructed very carefully, based on his study of historical writing techniques at the British Museum. His capital letters took their form from the best classical Roman inscriptions. “He had serious rules for his sans serif style,” says Farey, “particularly the height-to-weight ratio of 1:7 for the construction of line weight, and therefore horizontals and verticals were to be the same thickness. Johnston’s O’s and C’s and G’s and even his S’s were constructions of perfect circles. This was a bit of a problem as far as text sizes were concerned, or in reality sizes smaller than half an inch. It also precluded any other weight but medium ‘ any weight lighter or heavier than his 1:7 relationship.” Johnston was famously slow at any project he undertook, says Farey. “He did eventually, under protest, create a bolder weight, in capitals only ‘ which took twenty years to complete.” Farey and his colleague Richard Dawson have based ITC Johnston on Edward Johnston’s original block letters, expanding them into a three-weight type family. Johnston himself never called his Underground lettering a typeface, according to Farey. It was an alphabet meant for signage and other display purposes, designed to be legible at a glance rather than readable in passages of text. Farey and Dawson’s adaptation retains the sparkling starkness of Johnston’s letters while combining comfortably into text. Johnston’s block letter bears an obvious resemblance to Gill Sans, the highly successful type family developed by Monotype in the 1920s. The young Eric Gill had studied under Johnston at the London College of Printing, worked on the Underground project with him, and followed many of the same principles in developing his own sans serif typeface. The Johnston letters gave a characteristic look to London’s transport system after the First World War, but it was Gill Sans that became the emblematic letter form of British graphic design for decades. (Johnston’s sans serif continued in use in the Underground until the early ‘80s, when a revised and modernized version, with a tighter fit and a larger x-height, was designed by the London design firm Banks and Miles.) Farey and Dawson, working from their studio in London’s Clerkenwell, wanted to create a type family that was neither a museum piece nor a bastardization, and that would “provide an alternative of the same school” to the omnipresent Gill Sans. “These alphabets,” says Farey, referring to the Johnston letters, “have never been developed as contemporary styles.” He and Dawson not only devised three weights of ITC Johnston but gave it a full set of small capitals in each weight ‘ something that neither the original Johnston face nor the Gill faces have ‘ as well as old-style figures and several alternate characters.

Sharka is heavy sharp condensed system of 7 display typefaces widths, plus 7 italics and 7 alternative version on each family member, inspired on dangerous personality and aggressive reputation of the great white shark, it was thought to create the feel of high impact, high risk action on extreme situations, polemic public scandals, financial advertisement alert, the italic version specially creates the feel of velocity, powerful mechanical energy and related similar topics. Recommended to use in big headlines, magazine covers, advertisements, robust public visual calls, but also, if it applied with good taste and good typographical skills, could be a good choice not only for prints but also for web and digital media devices.

Being a geometric sanserif ocr-t comes in eleven weights from ultrawhite to infrablack (brightwhite, white, silver, lightgrey, grey, darkgrey, anthracite, black, jetblack). With more than 600 glyphs it covers all your typographic needs and manages to stay at the same place no matter which width you’re using. Its readability and legibility is more than fine although it needs no kerning. The infrablack is really black, in order to achieve this, the form of letters change from darkgrey to anthracite from upright to some kind of upright italic. This also gives opportunity to mix two weights with same colour but different architecture. Find also stylistic sets, alternate letters, lots of bullets, different arrows, hands and well: kind of hearts.