Helvetica’s 50-year anniversary celebrations in 2007 were overwhelming and contagious. We saw the movie. Twice. We bought the shirts and the buttons. We dug out the homage books and re-read the hate articles. We mourned the fading non-color of an old black shirt proudly exclaiming that “HELVETICA IS NOT AN ADOBE FONT”. We took part in long conversations discussing the merits of the Swiss classic, that most sacred of typographic dreamboats, outlasting its builder and tenants to go on alone and saturate the world with the fundamental truth of its perfect logarithm. We swooned again over its subtleties (“Ah, that mermaid of an R!”). We rehashed decades-old debates about “Hakzidenz,” “improvement in mind” and “less is more.” We dutifully cursed every single one of Helvetica’s knockoffs. We breathed deeply and closed our eyes on perfect Shakti Gawain-style visualizations of David Carson hack'n'slashing Arial — using a Swiss Army knife, no less — with all the infernal post-brutality of his creative disturbance and disturbed creativity. We then sailed without hesitation into the absurdities of analyzing Helvetica’s role in globalization and upcoming world blandness (China beware! Helvetica will invade you as silently and transparently as a sheet of rice paper!). And at the end of a perfect celebratory day, we positively affirmed à la Shakti, and solemnly whispered the energy of our affirmation unto the universal mind: “We appreciate Helvetica for getting us this far. We are now ready for release and await the arrival of the next head snatcher.” The great hype of Swisspalooza '07 prompted a look at Max Miedinger, the designer of Neue Haas Grotesk (later renamed to Helvetica). Surprisingly, what little biographical information available about Miedinger indicates that he was a typography consultant and type sales rep for the Haas foundry until 1956, after which time he was a freelance graphic designer — rather than the full-time type designer most Helvetica enthusiasts presume him to have been. It was under that freelance capacity that he was commissioned to design the regular and bold weights of Neue Haas Grotesk typeface. His role in designing Helvetica was never really trumpeted until long after the typeface attained global popularity. And, again surprisingly, Miedinger designed two more typefaces that seem to have been lost to the dust of film type history. One is called Pro Arte (1954), a very condensed Playbill-like slab serif that is similar to many of its genre. The other, made in 1964, is much more interesting. Its original name was Horizontal. Here it is, lest it becomes a Haas-been, presented to you in digital form by Canada Type under the name of its original designer, Miedinger, the Helvetica King. The original film face was a simple set of bold, panoramically wide caps and figures that give off a first impression of being an ultra wide Gothic incarnation of Microgramma. Upon a second look, they are clearly more than that. This face is a quirky, very non-Akzidental take on the vernacular, mostly an exercise in geometric modularity, but also includes some unconventional solutions to typical problems (like thinning the midline strokes across the board to minimize clogging in three-storey forms). This digital version introduces four new weights, ranging from Thin to Medium, alongside the bold original. The Miedinger package comes in all popular font formats, and supports Western, Central and Eastern European languages, as well as Esperanto, Maltese, Turkish and Celtic/Welsh. A few counter-less alternates are included in the fonts.

Graduating Class JNL was inspired by the hand lettered titles found on a 1934 high school yearbook from Richmond Hill, NY called "The Senior Dome". This Art Deco era type design is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Ranch Hand JNL is a tall, condensed wood type with slab serifs. The font is somewhat bolder in weight than Nostrand JNL, but like its counterpart, fully captures the spirit and flavor of Nineteenth Century advertising, fliers and notices.

Kare is a custom font which is applicable for any type of graphic design - web, print, motion graphics etc and perfect for t-shirts and logos. Inspired by the popular and unique Motter Ombra typeface designed by Othmar Motter.

The face exudes Edwardian elegance, based on a 1905 release from American Type Founders called Meriontype. It's evocative of simpler times. Both versions of this font support the Latin 1252, Central European 1250, Turkish 1254 and Baltic 1257 codepages.

A revival of one of the popular wooden type fonts of the 19th century, suitable for text or display, short descenders, tall ascenders, the narrow, italic version, completing the Gothic Special family of 5 fonts in total, sans serif.

Totem Forms is based on a series of aluminum and rubber wall constructions currently showing in Europe and the United States. Mirek's work has been shown internationally for many years and this is his first foray into type development.

The basic idea of this type family was to keep the "ductus" of the fraktur calligraphy only. And to adapt it to draw a sans serif typography which still keep the magic rhythm and colour of the original letters.

FP Dancer attempts to combine a constructed face with an upright script face. The goal was a type family that combines softness and friendliness with more strength. Typographica.org selected this font as one of the best typefaces for 2007.

This is Solotype's alternative sans serif version of the once popular caps-only font Atlanta issued by the Central Type Foundry in St. Louis in 1885. As we often do, we have created a lowercase, adding to its versatility.

Inkblock is based on various ink printing and rubbings from an ancient wood type set. Inkblock the alphabet has lots of detail, so looks great printed large. It's a good headline font or whenever an antique look is needed.

Gallard is a two weights family that contains the display type of the great cartoonist and illustrator Miguel Gallardo. In addition, as we usually do for this kind of author fonts, there is a collection of drawings called Victims.

Introducing The Smell After Rain by Tlatous Type. The smell after rain is a Modern Handwritten Font. this font is perfect for product packaging, branding project, megazine, social media, wedding, or just used to express words above the background.

Introducing a new layered bold script font called Hardsign .Hardsign inspired by classic signage and vintage font. Hardsign came with open type features and multilingual accent good for logotype, poster, badge, book cover, tshirt design, packaging and any more.

Typesetter JNL is based on an old-style 'grotesk' (or 'grotesque') text face popular with printers and rubber stamp makers since the 1800s. The nonconformist character shapes and line widths are reminiscent of hand-cut type of the era.

This font perfectly made to be applied especially in logo, and the other various formal forms such as invitations, labels, logos, magazines, books, greeting / wedding cards, packaging, fashion, make up, stationery, novels, labels or any type of advertising purpose.

The basic idea of this type family was to keep the "ductus" of the fraktur calligraphy only. And to adapt it to draw a sans serif typography which still keep the magic rhythm and colour of the original letters.

Fonts without curved lines were quite popular in Victorian times. We drew this one back in the days of T-squares and triangles, and based it on a type that we felt could stand to be improved. (Arrogant, eh?)

Robert Wiebking based the Engravure face on the Engravers faces developed by American Type Founders around 1903. Engravure can be used as a titling font for magazines, brochures, and book covers. It is also suitable for packaging and stationery.

Here’s a classic face from Dutch master type designer Sjoerd H. de Roos. Use it where timeless elegance is the goal. Both versions of this font support the Latin 1252, Central European 1250, Turkish 1254 and Baltic 1257 codepages.

Amidst the pages of the 1946 foreign-printed "100 Alphabets Publicitaires" ("100 Advertising Alphabets") was an example of a beautiful vertical script type design with a somewhat calligraphic look. This became the work model for Script Spot Initials JNL.

Brondi is based on a wood type specimen from a french foundry, featuring a weird grotesque with inverted contrast and extremely tight spacing. It was used for large displays mainly in advertising. The font is a caps version only.

Rustic Setting JNL is the solidified version of Rustic Stencil JNL. Originally modeled from lettering on the cover a children's book, the solid version of this Western-inspired typeface is reminiscent of the classic wood types of the era.

I saw an old logo for Giro d'Italia on telly, and was just smitten by the truly ugly type: just ruler and compass work, no intakes or optical corrections whatsoever. I just had to turn that into a font.

Originally issued as Apollo by the Central Type Foundry of Saint Louis, this face evokes the glamor of late Victorian era. Both versions of this font support the Latin 1252, Central European 1250, Turkish 1254 and Baltic 1257 codepages.

Hair is another beautiful URW++ FontForum contribution by Wojtek Ruhnau. It is a technically ambitious multi-line script-like type design that should be used carefully and in large sizes only. However, set properly, Hair renders beautifully and charmingly.

A surprisingly modern looking condensed sans serif issued by Mackellar, Smiths & Jordan foundry in 1887. Its narrow width makes it useful for long copy headlines. Designed by the freelance type cutter Charles Beeler who did many fonts for Mackellar.

Vingiloth is a delicate script which simulates natural handwriting. Vingiloth includes Vingiloth Regular and Vingiloth Caps, designed to contrast and compliment each other with elegant beauty and contemporary style, making it an excellent fit for projects of all types.

The December, 1935 movie poster for James Cagney in “Public Enemy” has its title hand lettered in a bold, squared, slab serif type style. Now digitally recreated as Lawbreaker JNL, it is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Aldo Novarese, the famous Italian type designer (ITC Novarese, Eurostile, and many others), designed Nadianne. The elegant, readable Agfa Nadianne looks as good on an invitation as it does on a business letter. Featured in: Best Fonts for Tattoos

This font is a somewhat modified version of the original issued by the Manhattan Type Foundry in the 1880s. This New York foundry was in business for less than five years, so its fonts are not too well known.

Presswood JNL was modeled from the title font used on the cover of a specimen book issued by the Delittle Wood Type Company of York, England. This bold, friendly sans serif is available in both regular and oblique versions.

While researching the history of Onitsuka Tiger's branding and graphic design, I came across an odd, yet highly appealing piece of custom lettering on the company's ONICK ski boots from the 1970s. Reminiscent of aspects of the typeface Black-Out by Eli Carrico (released by my type foundry Wordshape), yet vertically compressed with razor-sliced counters and odd stencil element that makes up one of the legs of the "K", the ONICK lettering is a potential source for an intriguing modular font. I immediately thought of Ryoichi Tsunekawa as a potential collaborator to bring this piece of lettering to full-fledged life in the contemporary context. Based in Nagoya, Tsunekawa runs an independent type foundry called Dharma Type, including three specialized foundry sub-labels: Flat-It, devoted to display lettering; Prop-A-Ganda, a series of fonts inspired by and based on retro propaganda posters, movie posters, retail sign lettering & advertisements in the early 20th century; and Holiday Type, a series of decorative and retro scripts for holiday use. The past year has seen a flurry of notice of his work abroad, having been featured in both MyFonts' "Creative Characters" and YouWorkForThem's newsletter. As the work of most Japanese type designers is almost wholly unnoticed abroad, for Tsunekawa to be interviewed by two of the most popular type distribution companies in the world is definitely something beyond the norm. Perhaps it is because he works independently, or perhaps it is due to the charm and friendliness with which his typefaces are infused. Either way, this attention is both welcome and appreciated. Beyond mere charm, Tsunekawa's work is nuanced, detailed, and accessible due to its high level of finish. His fonts stand apart from his contemporaries in Latin typeface design in Japan due to his fascination with pop, vernacular and historical lettering from "non-pure" sources- whereas type designers like Kunihiko Okano and Akira Kobayashi have spent years analyzing the essence of Western letterform construction and unlocking the essence of Latin forms, Tsunekawa views surface and the awkward nature of his sources as being of value, as well. His irreverence for the formal doctrines of history imbue his typeface designs with a rugged inventiveness that would be missed by most- glyphs without source designs are guessed at and approximated, often in a manner wildly divergent from what Western eyes would assume. It is in these moments that I find sheer delight in Tsunekawa’s work and what make me most pleased to invite him aboard Neojaponisme and Onitsuka Tiger’s type development project. His assorted typefaces show an eclecticism in finish and as holistic systems- Tsunekawa's return email to me about the proposed type project showed a digital sketch of how a completed typeface family from the source lettering might look, rendered with an effortlessness and dedication to detail that belies a skilled craftsperson. Further development showed Tsunekawa’s rigor- the typeface in development rapidly featured glyphs ignored by many: a full set of fractions, Eastern European diacritics and accents, superior and inferior numerals, alternate characters, and custom ligatures - all designed with regulated, detailed spacing. ONICK is a typeface Tsunekawa should be proud of- an homage to a moment in history rendered in the absolute best fashion. We are proud to present it to the world! --Ian Lynam

Over the past few years, every designer has seen the surprising outbreak of blackletter types in marketing campaigns for major sports clothing manufacturers, a few phone companies, soft drink makers, and more recently on entertainment and music products. In such campaigns, blackletter type combined with photos of usual daily activity simply adds a level of strength and mystique to things we see and do on a regular basis. But we couldn't help noticing that the typography was very odd in such campaigns, where the type overpowers all the other design elements. This is because almost all blackletter fonts ever made express too much strength and time-stamp themselves in a definite manner, thereby eliminating themselves as possible type choices for a variety of common contemporary design approaches, such as minimal, geometric, modular, etc. So extending the idea of using blackletter in modern design was a bit of a wild goose chase for us. But we finally found the face that completes the equation no other blackletter could fit into: Leather is a digitization and major expansion of Imre Reiner's forgotten but excellent 1933 Gotika design, which was very much ahead of its time. In its own time this design saw very little use because it caused problems to printers, where the thin serifs and inner bars were too fragile and broke off too easily when used in metal. But now, more than seventy years later, it seems like it was made for current technologies, and it is nothing short of being the perfect candidate for using blackletter in grid-based settings. Leather has three features usually not found in other blackletter fonts: - Grid-based geometric strokes and curves: In the early 1930s, blackletter design had already begun interacting back with the modern sans serif it birthed at the turn of the century. This design is one of the very few manifestations of such interaction. - Fragile, Boboni-like serifs, sprout from mostly expected places in the minuscules, but are sprinkled very aesthetically on some of the majuscules. The overall result is magnificently modern. - The usual complexity of blackletter uppercase's inner bars is rendered simple, geometric and very visually appealing. The contrast between the inner bars and thick outer strokes creates a surprising circuitry-like effect on some of the letters (D, O, Q), wonderfully plays with the idea of fragile balances on some others (M, N and P), and boldly introduces new concepts on others (B, F, K, L, R). Our research seems to suggest that the original numerals used with this design in the 1930s were adopted from a previous Imre Reiner typeface. They didn't really fit with the idea of this font, so we created brand new numerals for Leather. We also expanded the character set to cover all Western Latin-based languages, and scattered plenty of alternates and ligatures throughout the map. The name, Leather, was derived from a humorous attempt at naming a font. Initially we wanted to call it Black Leather (blackletter...blackleather), but the closer we came to finishing it, the more respect we developed for its attempt to introduce a plausible convergence between two entirely different type categories. Sadly for the art, this idea of convergence didn't go much further back then, due to technological limitations and the eventual war a few years later. We're hoping this revival would encourage people to look at blackletter under a new light in these modern times of multiple design influences.

Old Buddy is an elegant handwritten script font. Get inspired by its unique shape and character! Great and It will turn any design project stand-out!

Friskily is a soft bold script font with a retro and simple vibe. It will look great on headlines, magazines, logos, branding and so much more!