Early in the 19th century, foundries began releasing a variety of decorated ornamental letters based on the Tuscan letterform. Fancy Tuscan letters quickly became so popular, they eventually came to represent the cluttered extremes of Victorian design. Foundries competed with each other to produce most extravagantly decorated letterforms. As often happens, success turned to excess. What is often overlooked is the long history of the Tuscan style. Early examples have been traced back to ancient Rome. Indeed, the characteristic bifurcation may have represented a fishtail to the early Christians, thus sharing in the roll of symbolic identification played by the simple drawing of a fish as a whole. Later. trifurcation was developed as an alternate termination, followed by loops, full fishtails, curls, hooks and other fancy variations. Nicolete Gray provides an extensive history in her Appendix One of NINETEENTH CENTURY ORNAMENTED TYPEFACES. According to Gray, the first metal typeface based on the Tuscan form was the Ornamented of 1817 by Vincent Figgins of London. Thorowgood followed suit in 1821, Fry in 1824 and Caslon in 1830. Each was to re-visit the form many times during the Victorian era. Here we present our interpretation of what Figgins might have produced in a basic, plain Tuscan form - free of the decorative additions. We are pretty safe here because Figgins was very creative. He explored many of the terminal variations listed above and combined them with different decorative devices to produce a constant stream of new faces to meet the demands of the marketplace. Figgins Tuscan ML represents a major extension of the original release, with the following changes: 1. Added glyphs for the 1250 Central Europe, the 1252 Turkish and the 1257 Baltic Code Pages. There are also a few glyphs for Anglo-Saxon, Gaelic and Old Gaelic. Total of 355 glyphs. 2. Added OpenType GSUB layout features: aalt, ornm and liga ˜ with total 34 lookups. 3. Added 351 kerning pairs. 4. Redesigned several glyphs: the comma, quotes, brackets, braces, acute accent, and grave accent. 5. Revised vertical metrics for improved cross-platform line spacing. Please note that some older applications may only be able to access the Western Europe character set (approximately 221 glyphs). The zip package includes two versions of the font at no extra charge. There is an OTF version which is in Open PS (Post Script Type 1) format and a TTF version which is in Open TT (True Type)format. Use whichever works best for your applications.

Preto is an extensive type family, which explores the function of serifs on readability and legibility. Preto consist of three subfamilies: Sans, Semi and Serif. Preto is designed for multilingual typesetting. All of the subfamilies have equal gray value but different texture which can be use to differentiate languages. Preto sub-families have two text weights and two bold styles (Regular -> Bold, Medium -> Black). Every weight has a companion Italic style as well. The serif version has been designed to work best at small point sizes (around 8, 9 points). You will not achieve calm, boring or invisible look of your text with Preto Serif. Its long, spiky and sharp serifs contribute to give the typeface a distinct and energetic character. It is very suitable for magazines, corporate identity, brochures or other print materials where a typeface for continuous reading is required. The ligatures in Preto Serif are very special. You can set them in different tracking values and spacing will increase/decrease consistently in the ligatures as well. Alternative characters in the font files allow you to change the feeling of the text from typical to more special (J, Q, g , &). Each font contains a full set of small caps and many alternative characters for complex typesetting.

Preto is an extensive type family, which explores the function of serifs on readability and legibility. Preto consist of three subfamilies: Sans, Semi and Serif. Preto is designed for multilingual typesetting. All of the subfamilies have equal gray value but different texture which can be use to differentiate languages. Preto sub-families have two text weights and two bold styles (Regular -> Bold, Medium -> Black). Every weight has a companion Italic style as well. The serif version has been designed to work best at small point sizes (around 8, 9 points). You will not achieve calm, boring or invisible look of your text with Preto Serif. Its long, spiky and sharp serifs contribute to give the typeface a distinct and energetic character. It is very suitable for magazines, corporate identity, brochures or other print materials where a typeface for continuous reading is required. The ligatures in Preto Serif are very special. You can set them in different tracking values and spacing will increase/decrease consistently in the ligatures as well. Alternative characters in the font files allow you to change the feeling of the text from typical to more special (J, Q, g , &). Each font contains a full set of small caps and many alternative characters for complex typesetting.

Fast Rewind: A Timeless Handwritten Script Font A handwritten brush script with a versatile, relaxed and nostalgic feel. This illustrative brush script owes its inspiration to the 1950s art direction typical of mainstream magazines and book covers. A relaxed hand-lettered title was often paired with illustrations of handsome couples or escapist scenes, encouraging readers to settle into the latest gripping story from authors such as Ray Bradbury, Donald Westlake or Arthur Miller. Fast Rewind aims to repurpose this vintage look for contemporary designers with two handwritten fonts, drawn in ink and brush, and then digitally mastered to maintain those all-important human imperfections. Included are the Regular and Alternative designs, with a complete set of uppercase and lowercase characters, along with numbers, symbols and language support. Also included are a variety of underlines and illustrations as seen in these visuals. Each style also comes with its own selection of extra glyphs to helps you achieve the perfect flow between characters and avoid tell-tale repetition. Thanks to all the great photographers who provided images for these visuals.

DT Portal: This stylised, partially serifed font, made with a slightly rounded square form, may have been inspired initially by old cathode ray tubes and computer screens. Although not intended to be purely a ‘tech’ font, it can have a strong tech feel to it. More suited to being a headline font than body text. It also appears to have a monospaced look to it, since most letters, (other than letters like ‘i, l and t’), do have the same width. There is some automatic contextual shape adjustment happening in places, to avoid taking up too much space, so contextual ligatures should be turned on. As is the case with most of my fonts, when given the choice, ‘metric’ spacing should be used in preference to ‘optical’. Initially this font was going to be called ‘DT Portal’, because its form was similar to that of a window or doorway. But due to other fonts already having that name, I chose to rename it as ‘DT Partel’, for no reason other than it is only a very small change visually.

Here at Comicraft we have seen the signs on the headline news, we have read the portents of things to come... yes, just as thunder is a sign of storm, just as pumpkins outside Ralph's on November the 1st are sure to be on sale, just as fresh produce becomes rotten, as sure as night turns to day, dark turns to gray, winter turns to spring and milk turns sour if you leave it out on the kitchen table overnight... Yes, here at Comicraft we know there's a signpost up ahead... a sign heading not into the twilight zone, but down a road of hope and hard work, a banner year, a red letter day, we know it's time to knuckle down, soldier on and pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. Well, we should probably pull ourselves up by our bootstraps BEFORE we soldier on, NEVERTHELESS, here it is -- not a soundbite, not an unfulfilled campaign promise -- SignLanguage is a font that makes the impossible possible, a font that cuts the taxes for 95% of American families, a font that closes down Gitmo and brings our troops home from Iraq. Senator Joe "Six Pack" Biden has described SignLanguage as articulate and bright and clean -- and a nice-looking font. In conclusion, Comicraft recommends you elect Sign Language.