Kamui is a font designed by Carlos Fabian Camargo G. and used to write headlines. Its strategy makes it ideal for covers and advertisements with Japanese-style manga comics requiring latin style. Precisely its purpose was inspired by typographical classics such as Mistral by R. Excoffon and Zapfino by H. Zapf that then were diluted by separate strokes as blackletter calligraphy. However, high doses of miscegenation and lettering untimely torn between 50% esthetic and 50% legibility. That way his radical expression is highly profitable for composing and designing words and phrases with Eastern look. And more importantly, the writing seems drawn quickly with thin-tipped brush staining over a rough surface, from that process comes the idea of corroded outlines and changes in contrast. In conclusion, some diagonal strokes, horizontal, curved and vertical stand or hide from their simulation of scarcity or abundance of ink clots. That way each stroke seems inconsistent, footprint of the 423 brush drawing glyphs in Regular Kamuy. In that sense, the OpenType features included are: Standard Ligatures, Contextual Alternates, discretionary ligatures, swash, stylistic alternates, alternatives for titles, ordinals, fractions. And to end the Variable “Kamuy Dingbats” has is 52 fictitious drawings and zamurais.

Today's digital font technology allowed the world-renowned typeface designer/calligrapher Hermann Zapf to finally realize a vision he first had more than fifty years ago: creating a typeface that could capture the freedom and liveliness of beautiful handwriting. The basic Zapfino™ font family, released in 1998, consists of four alphabets with many additional stylistic alternates that can be freely mixed together to emulate the variations in handwritten text. In 2003, Herman Zapf completely reworked the Zapfino design, creating Zapfino™ Extra. This large expansion of the Zapfino family was designed in close collaboration with Akira Kobayashi. Zapfino™ Extra includes a cornucopia of new characters. It features exuberant hyper-flourishes, elegant small caps, dozens of ornaments, more alternates and ligatures, index characters, and a very useful bold version, named Zapfino™ Forte. A version of the 1998 Zapfino typeface ships as one of the pre-installed fonts included with Mac OSX. The Mac OSX version's letters are four times larger than the Linotype standard. In order to minimize compatibility problems for Macintosh users, Linotype has created OSX versions of its Zapfino Extra Pro typefaces, which have been enlarged to correlate visually with the Mac OS Zapfino system font. These special Linotype fonts can be distinguished by the letter X" in their name. Zapfino Extra is an OpenType format font, which is available in two versions. Which version you purchase should depend on which software applications you use the most and what features they support! The Contextual version of Zapfino Extra Pro contains a treasure-trove of extra contextual features. When created in 2004, this was the most advanced OpenType font released to date. By purchasing this version, users of OpenType-supporting applications, such as Adobe InDesign, may access all of the features available in the entire Zapfino family through just two fonts, Zapfino Extra LT Pro (Contextual) and Zapfino Forte LT Pro! Unfortunately, most non-Adobe applications currently do not support the contextual features made possible by recent OpenType developments. Users of Quark XPress and Microsoft Office should instead purchase all of the non-contextual fonts of Zapfino Extra Pro family, in order to access all of the Zapfino Extra family's 1676 glyphs. The Zapfino Extra family's character set supports 48 western and central European languages. Use Zapfino Extra to produce unusual and graceful advertisements, packaging, and invitations. Zapfino Extra is so joyously abundant that it's tempting to over-indulge, so be sure to check out the tips for working well with the possibilities."

This family was inspired by a Type Battle over at Typophile: How would you design a font metrically compatible with Helvetica, but better than Arial? Working with preset letter widths was an interesting constraint, both a relief and a limitation at the same time. I have done all the 4 basic weights, and the skewed obliques (done to a slightly less steep 10 degrees angle as opposed to the originals 12) has been optically adjusted. The letters have been designed quite close to the german/swiss grotesk tradition, but by using super-elliptical rounds, rounded dots and slightly curved outer diagonals the end result is a friendly looking font family that still looks... familiar. 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.

Rufolo is a family of fonts that can be considered both aesthetic and utilitarian. It has an apparent serif, barely hinted at, whose clear past reference is a beautiful epigraphic script on the marble plate placed at the southern entrance of the Roman amphitheatre, in Pompeii. Perhaps its origin dates back to Ugarit's cuneiform writing (as Morrison suggests as the origin of the serif in "Politics and Scripts") whose characteristic triangular-shaped incision footprint produces a powerful trait that not only gives character to the writing but also facilitates its support and visual compensation of sizes with neighboring signs. Other clear inspirational references have been Robert Hunter Middleton's Stellar (1929); Albertus (1932) by William A. Dwiggins; Optima (1952) by Hermann Zapf; And more recently RRollie (2016) by our foundry. Rufolo collects the attractive characteristic of the stroke endings but the proportions of its structure becomes much more regular, the capitals are in line with a constant square module, while the above references retain the proportions of the Roman Trajan. Some endings strokes have slightly baroque reminiscence with the intention of giving it greater plasticity and aesthetic enrichment, but absolutely controlled, taking special care of the aspects of readability and expressive neutrality. Rufolo Family comes in four weight: Light, Regular, Bold and Black, accompanied by its corresponding Italic versions.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a pack of Instant Harmony in your cupboard? Just add water and *poof* - all strive and struggle have gone, having been replaced by peace and quiet. The grass seems greener, the sky bluer and the air smells like a fresh mowed lawn. Ahhhh! Zap! Back to reality. There is no instant harmony, don’t go looking for it in your local supermarket! If you want a taste of something resembling instant harmony, then add this super-duper font family to your collection and use it for your designs. You may find that your creativity levels are up, your morning coffee tastes better and your designs look exactly like you had in mind. Pinky promise!

With the clear, simple elegance of its sans serif forms and the warmly human touches of its tapering stems, the Optima family has proved popular around the world. In 2002, when it was finally possible to produce digital alphabets without technical limitations and compromises, and more than fifty years after the first sketches, an expansion and redesign of the Optima family was completed and released as Optima nova. Hermann Zapf and Japanese type designer, Akira Kobayashi, collaborated on the project, which included re-working of the existing weights and the addition of several new weights: small caps, old style figures, light, heavy, and condensed. The original Optima was never manufactured with a real italic, only an oblique version of the roman. Optima nova has a complete range of beautifully designed real italics; the new italic forms, of the e, f and g are especially notable. The titling face includes capital letters with special and unusual letter combinations and ligatures, making it an excellent choice for headlines, logos and advertising purposes. Optima continues to be an all-purpose typeface; and Optima nova works for just about anything from book text to signage. Optima Nova® font field guide including best practices, font pairings and alternatives.

The designer of ITC Medea , Silvio Napoleone said: “I've always had an interest in early letter shapes, particularly how they influenced modern typographic designs. While I was on vacation in Greece, I had a chance to see, first-hand, examples of early letterforms and typography. They really made an impression on me.” The idea of combining the ancient and the modern to create something new was the primary inspiration behind ITC Medea. ITC Medea is essentially a careful blending of the modern sans serif with the elegant forms of the uncial. At first glance, Medea appears to be constructed of geometric shapes. However, closer inspection reveals many calligraphic subtleties. Stroke terminals are flared slightly in characters like the 'e' and 'c.' The top curve of the 'd' is more pronounced than the bottom, and characters like the 'o' are elliptical rather than round. “I gravitated towards the simplicity and legibility of the uncial and half-uncial,” Napoleone recalls. “I thought it would make a great titling font, and I was surprised at how attractive ITC Medea looked in a body text.”

Coil feels comfortable like a well-worn pair of shoes. It could easily pass for an assertive industrial European sans serif of the early 1960s with its slight reverse contrast, monotonous proportions, and squared-off curves, if not for its less predictable side. What appears initially as ellipses upon closer inspection turns out to be irregular shapes, closer to an inverted egg than an oval. The s looks topsy-turvy with its higher curve that is larger than the lower. Some terminal strokes overhang the bowl (as in the a), others open flat (as in the Q, the f, the j, and the t). The resulting effect shakes up this seemingly “retro” face just to make it new. Our midcentury recollections are slightly distorted and reinterpreted by this ironic typeface making it fresh while deceptively cozy and familiar. Coil’s high x-height and even texture make it readable even in small sizes despite its tight apertures. Available in four weights with their italics, with two sets of figures, fractions, and alternates for Extended Latin and Cyrillic scripts. Designed by Vyacheslav Kirilenko and Gayaneh Bagdasaryan, 2020-21.

Palatino Sans was designed as part of a group of three font families: Palatino nova, Palatino Sans, and Palatino Sans Informal. Together these three families act as the fulfilment of Herman Zapf’s original Palatino idea. Palatino, which was born as a metal typeface in 1950, proved to be one of the 20th Century’s most popular designs. Not only is Palatino Sans a completely new typeface, it is also a completely new interpretation of the entire sans serif genre. Its letterforms are curved, rounded, and soft, not hard and industrial. The fonts in the Palatino Sans family include several OpenType features, such as an extended character set covering all Latin-based European languages, old style figures, small caps, fractions, ordinals, ligatures, alternates, and ornaments. Palatino Sans can be mixed well with Palatino and Palatino Sans Informal. Palatino® Sans font field guide including best practices, font pairings and alternatives.

Jim Rimmer’s first typeface was originally published in 1970 as a basic film type alphabet through a small, independent type house in central California. Its sources of influence (now calligraphic type standards by Dair, Goudy and Zapf) are ones that remained with Jim for the rest of his career. If you squint at Totemic in just the right way, you can see some recognizable themes Jim would later flesh out and make his own in later works throughout his career as a type designer and printer. Totemic is now available for the first time as a digital font, of the refined and expanded kind now expected from Canada Type. It comes with quite a few standard advanced typography features: Small caps, caps-to-small-caps, automatic fractions and standard ligatures, stylistic alternate sets, six kinds of figures, case-sensitive forms, and extended Latin language support. It also comes with a very unique and unprecedented feature: Variably stackable totem poles. Simply enable the discretionary ligatures feature, type any unique three-digit combination using numbers between 1 and 4, and watch the magic happens. With a name like Totemic, we just couldn't help ourselves. Many thanks to Andrew Steeves of Gaspereau Press for finding Jim’s lost gem in a most unexpected place, and for helping us bring it back to life 45 years after its analog birth. 20% of Totemic’s revenues will be donated to the Canada Type Scholarship Fund, supporting higher typography education in Canada.

Lopsickles is a family in which the letters are based on lopsided, distorted ellipses. The family has four sets of letters that are combined in six different ways, yielding six fonts. Four of these fonts (styles AB, Ad, Bc, and cd) use the OpenType feature Contextual Alternatives (calt) to alternate letter sets so that top-heavy characters alternate with bottom-heavy characters. The spacing in these fonts is designed for alternating characters and will result in overlap if the characters do not alternate. The other two styles (Ac and Bd) are spaced normally. Style Ac contains the two character sets that are top heavy and style Bd has the two character sets that are bottom heavy. The Ac and Bd fonts have italics and backslanted styles that may be useful to suggest speed. Each of these ten fonts has an inset style designed to be used in a layer above the base font. This layering can be used to give the effect of hollow letters or to add a colored interior. Lopsickles joins several other alternating-characters families in the IngrimayneType library including Snuggels, CloseTogether, and Caltic, but is visually very different from them. It is a strange, unusual family that will get noticed.

Palatino Sans Informal was designed as part of a group of three font families: Palatino nova, Palatino Sans, and Palatino Sans Informal. Together these three families act as the fulfilment of Herman Zapf’s original Palatino idea. Palatino, which was born as a metal typeface in 1950, proved to be one of the 20th Century’s most popular designs. Not only is Palatino Sans Informal a completely new typeface, it is also a completely new interpretation of the entire sans serif genre. Its letterforms are curved, rounded, and soft, not hard and industrial. In comparison with Palatino Sans, Palatino Sans Informal offers eccentricities that are somewhat artistic and more individual looking. The fonts in the Palatino Sans Informal family include several OpenType features, such as an extended character set covering all Latin-based European languages, old style figures, small caps, fractions, ordinals, ligatures, alternates, and ornaments. Palatino Sans Informal can be mixed well with Palatino and Palatino Sans.

Between twilight and daybreak it is said that the dark side of the human psyche eclipses the sun that shines from the depths of our souls. Certainty turns to doubt, clarity becomes confusion, man turns into wolf, the dead wake, vampires seduce the young are restless and milk boils over on the stove. Those that seek only to bathe in the light of a romantic new moon often end their tragic lives soaked in nothing other than their own blood, and the milk spilt on the stovetop has no one left to cry over it. There are fifty shades of grey during those hours after sunset and I think just as many in my porridge this morning. Yes, okay, I admit it, I spoiled the milk! This porridge tastes like it was left in a graveyard overnight. Death warmed over. Gothic and lumpy. Just like the Buried weights of this font.

Designed by the renowned Robert Hunter Middleton of Chicago’s Ludlow Typograph Company, this “serifless roman” was first introduced in 1929. Middleton has created a transitional face linking the traditional thick and thin serifs of the times with the new Futura and Kabel design imports. With its slightly flared main strokes, Stellar predates in many respects Hermann Zapf's Optima by thirty years. Highly effective where an elegant and warm feeling is desired. This typeface is faithful to the original letterforms of the Stellar design. Stellar Classic is also available in the OpenType Std format. Some new characters have been added as stylistic alternates in this new version. Stylistic alternates and other advanced features currently work in Adobe Creative Suite InDesign, Creative Suite Illustrator, and Quark XPress 7. Check for OpenType advanced feature support in other applications as it gradually becomes available with upgrades.

The source of inspiration for Haute Monde Monogram is the 1934 "Book of American Types" by American Type Founders. Found in that specimen book was a wonderfully elegant traditional smallcap-Capital-smallcap monogram alphabet known as “Elite Monogram Initials”. This elegant typeface is now digitally remastered and updated for modern use with functionality beyond its original intentions. Download and view the MFC Haute Monde Guidebook if you would like to learn a little more. MFC Haute Monde Monogram comes complete with Pro format fonts. You will require with programs that can take advantage of OpenType features contained within the Pro fonts.

Our Distressed Telegraph brings the unique individuality of the Large Elite Type No. 44 vintage typewriter keyset to the digital age. Vintage typewriters evoke a warmth and comfort to them, primarily because of their unpredictable "grunge" results from force of keystrokes to ribbon and paper. The SmallCaps and extensive figure sets add a more serious note to the nature of the typeface. See the 5th graphic for a comprehensive character map preview. Opentype features include: - SmallCaps. - Full set of Inferiors and Superiors for limitless fractions. - Tabular, Proportional, and Oldstyle figure sets (along with SmallCaps versions of the figures). - Stylistic Alternates for Caps to SmallCaps conversion.

A sheet music edition of an early 1900s song entitled "You Taught Me How to Love You, Now Teach Me to Forget" was hand lettered in a free-form Art Nouveau style that combined varying line widths and character shapes. This unrestricted style of lettering was popularly embraced and revived by the hippie counterculture of the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s through their rock concert posters, record album covers and tee shirt graphics. It is now available digitally as Nouveau Artiste JNL. As a side note, a 1940s reprint of the sheet music was done in a popular metal typeface, which was also redrawn digitally and available as Elite Resort JNL [in both regular and oblique versions].

Lunanic is a geometric novelty typeface family with a touch of graffiti. The letters are formed from a circle with a notch or nick taken out, a shape that reminds me of a partial lunar eclipse. Half of the family have the nick on the left and half on the right. The faces are monospaced and so tightly spaced that there is no space between most of the letters so the filled styles cannot be used alone without tweaking. There are several ways to tweak them to make them readable: adjacent letters can be colored differently, the characters spacing can be increased, or an outlined style can be layered on top of the filled letters. The family does not have a true lower case. Most of the characters in the lower-case slots are alternates for those on the upper-case keys and they can be mixed in whatever way the user finds best. The family has twelve members: two orientations with three weights each and each of these six has an outline style to go with it. Lunanic is fun, bizarre, weird, and obviously a decorative display font.

Wedding Text was designed by Morris Fuller Benton in 1901 for American Type Founders (ATF). The face was so popular that its forms soon began appearing with other font foundries under different names, Elite Kanzlei with D. Stempel AG, Comtesse with C.F. Rühl, Linotext with Linotype, etc. Its ornamental forms are not considered very legible by today's standards; therefore it should be used for headlines and short texts in point sizes 12 or larger.

Poetica font was designed by Robert Slimbach in 1992 with particularly generous characters. The typeface family consists of 21 weights to allow for an unusual variety of design possibilities within one typeface family. Numerous swash letters, ornaments and ligatures remind one of the early Renaissance and its unforgettable masters, for example, Giambattista Palatino, who later gave his name to Hermann Zapf's creation. Slimbach used the Lettera Cancellaresca as a model for his typeface, the cultivated humanistic italic which later served as a point of departure for the development of italics of the Renaissance and thereafter. Lettera Cancellaresca is very legible, extremely harmonic and impressively beautiful. The early forms display two different compositional tendencies, namely the static of the simple vertical capitals and the italic dynamic of the slanted lower case alphabet, as shown in the weight Chancery 4. The capitals later conform to the slant of the lower case, as shown in the weights Chancery 1-3. Poetica font should be set according to the included suggestion in order to see the full benefit of its grace and beauty.

Fans of Comicraft have made a lot of noise (HELP!) about the availability of ready-to-wear, factory surplus sound effects, not unlike those made available over a decade ago in our extremely popular and raucous ZAP PACK. It may sound impossible (WHA--?!), but Comicraft's Sonic Specialist, John JG Roshell, locked himself away (CLIK) in our top-secret SFX lab forming Onomatopoeia at high speeds (FWOOSH) and extreme temperatures (BBRRR), and sounded out over One Hundred (GASP) of the loudest (BTOOM), most intense (UNNGHH), squawkiest (KRAKK), discordant (SPLANGG), dissonant (SQUTCH) -- as well as dulcet and restrained (THWIPP) -- sound effects ever conceived (WOO HOO!) Helpfully arranged in alphabetical order (YIPPEE!), this Library of Onomatopeia -- the ONOMATOPEDIA, if you will (DING) -- is now available for use by the general public. WARNING: Comicraft Sound Effects may explode on contact with skin (AAAH!); please use protective clothing and eyewear when handling the Onomatopedia.

The Monotype Typewriter" series contains three typefaces. These were made to enable type to be set that could emulate output from real typewriters. Use where a typewritten look is required for reports, tabular work, where the fixed pitch nature of these faces is an advantage, technical documentation and correspondence. Typewriter Regular is the base style of the family. Typewriter Elite is lighter than Typewriter Regular, and is monotone in weight, being designed to retain readability even when multiple carbon copies are produced. Typewriter Gothic is a medium weight sans serif typewriter face designed to give good readability from a fixed pitch typeface. Originally made for daisy wheel printers, the Typewriter Gothic font is useful for tabular work, technical documents, correspondence and reports."

Conversation Hearts are inspired by the sweethearts and conversation hearts that can be found all over the US and Britain, but not in Germany. A source of endless fun and surprise. As a typographer to me they are also a surprising document of written communication. Most people complain that nowadays the inscriptions are not as sweet as they used to be. While they used to held romantic and promising inscriptions like “Be True” “Sweet Talk”, today they carry “Tweet me” “Ur Hot” and “Party Girl”. So i took this as a motivation to work with conversation sweetheart on a conceptial inspirational and typographical level. The obvious: every letter pressed on the keyboard brings out a conversation heart that starts with the letter - i.e. L = Loverboy, H = Heartless but what to write? Since i didn't want to reproduce the old “Fax me” and “Email me” I had to come up with something new. Something with a personal relation and of course something that I Love - what else could i write in the shape of the heart? So I tried to access my upper subconsciousness and looked for two words for every letter in the alphabet. One for the capital letter pressed and one word for the lowercase letter. Resulting in a Kurt Schwitters worthy assemblage of vocables "Post-office" “Internship” “Zebra” “Answers” etc. It is not easy to read a text set in Conversation Hearts but easier as a text set in Zapf-Dingbats. To sparkle the visual appearance uppercase letters are filled hearts with “carved” inscription, while lowercase letters are an outlined heart with written inscription. Conversations Hearts is a part of the Light Hearted Font Collection that is inspired by a recording of Jean Baudrillard with the title, "Die Macht der Verführung" (The Power of Seduction) from 2006. Further inspiration came from the article, "The shape of the heart: I'm all yours". The heart represents sacred and secular love: a bloodless sacrifice. by British writer Louisa Young printed in EYE magazine (#43) London, 2002.

We’re delighted to bring you ‘I’m Fashionista,’ which simply oozes trendiness, style, glamour, and of course high fashion! This is a font that sings out ‘elite’ in the design sense of the word. Its sophisticated sensibility sets it apart from any other font you may have used. If you’ve ever needed to create your own fonts to use on a fashion flyer, you can already appreciate the value of having ready-to-use fonts such as ‘I’m Fashionsita’ in your bag of tricks! Anything to do with fashion and glamour needs to have that touch of delicacy, charm, beauty, and exclusivity to it, and we find the ‘I’m Fashionsita’ a perfect fit for such jobs. ‘I’m Fashionista’ is a must-have for any designer, especially those working with modern and upmarket designs.

Rotato is a lowercase only geometric slab-serif typeface that brings versatility to any design. This minimalist but distinctive font is defined by its crisp composition and modern elements — designed for optimal legibility at all sizes. Out now in all lower case, Rotato leaves an understated impression of elegance & futurism. Currently available in three standard weights, more coming soon: Rotato Light - Clean and classy Rotato Regular - Elegant and elite Rotato Bold - Strong and classic FEATURES Three (3) Font Weights + Italics Numbers and Punctuation New (v2): Extended Ligatures & Nordic Character Set Special Characters Rotato is a dynamic font that works great across various applications: from branding & logos to technology & fashion — whether in a giant heading, or paragraphs of body text. Thanks for checking out Rotato; we hope you enjoy using it.

Batman & Robin! Thelma & Louise! Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid! Hip Flask & Farrell! Frodo & Sam! Sonny & Cher! Calvin & Hobbes! Bert & Ernie! Dynamic Duos exist in all forms of literature & entertainment, and now Comicraft is proud to introduce its latest alliterative offering, DYNAMIC DUO! A buddy movie in font form, Dynamic Duo is a team-up of Solid and Open weights who can’t decide who is the lead and who is the sidekick! In the fine tradition of all two-in-ones and company-wide comic crossovers, first they fight and then they team up — to take your design on the biggest, loudest, most intense adventure of All Time. Dynamic Duo features comic-book style hook caps and alternate uppercase letters which automatically cycle for a more natural, hand-drawn appearance. Solid and Open weights can be layered to create chromatic effects, and matching variable fonts allow near-infinite control of weight and slant. Each weight contains 478 glyphs and supports 220 languages. Comicraft fonts are created BY comic book letterers FOR lettering comic books. Accept no substitutes! Artwork by Axel Medellin from Elephantmen #73

Linotext was designed by Morris Fuller Benton in 1901 and first appeared with the name Wedding Text with American Type Founders in Jersey City, where its metal forms were cut by hand. The font was so popular that its forms soon began appearing with other font foundries under different names, Elite Kanzlei with D. Stempel AG, Comtesse with C.F. Rühl, etc. Its ornamental forms are not considered very legible by today’s standards and Linotext should therefore be used for headlines and short texts in point sizes 12 or larger.

Pirouette is based on a logo that Japanese designer Ryuichi Tateno created for a packaging design project in 1999 (a shampoo container!). Tateno's logo experimented with complex, overlapped swash letterforms. He continued to develop these outside of the initial packaging project, until they took on a life of their own. Eventually, Tateno designed a full typeface out of the logo, Pirouette, which was the first place display face in Linotype's 2003 International Type Design Contest. The Pirouette typeface contains six different fonts. The basic font is Pirouette Regular. This is an engraver's italic lowercase paired with elaborate swash capitals. The swash capitals have two visual elements in their forms: thick strokes and thin strokes. Pirouette Text includes the same lowercase as Pirouette Regular, but the uppercase letters are much shorter and simpler. This "text" font can be used to set longer amounts of copy. Pirouette Alternate contains different lowercase glyphs and additional ligatures, which can be used as substitutes for the lowercase forms in the Pirouette Regular and Pirouette Text fonts. Pirouette Ornaments contains swashes and other knick-knacks that can either be added onto the end of a letter, or used as separate decorative elements or swooshes (accolades) on a page. Pirouette Separate 1 and Pirouette Separate 2 are two fonts that can be layered over top of one another in software applications that support layering (e.g., most Adobe and Macromedia applications, as well as QuarkXPress). Pirouette Separate 1 contains the thick stroke elements from Pirouette Regular's uppercase letters, as well as the same lowercase glyphs that can be found in Pirouette Regular and Pirouette Text. Pirouette Separate 2 contains only the thin stroke elements from Pirouette Regular's uppercase letters. By layering Pirouette Separate 1 and Pirouette Separate 2 over one another, you can give the uppercase letter's thick and thin stroke elements different colors and create unique, more calligraphic designs. The Pirouette family, Tanteno's first commercial typeface, was greatly influenced by the calligraphic and typographic work of the master German designer, Prof. Hermann Zapf, especially his Zapfino typeface.

We at Fontscafe are forever trying to work on conniving up typography that will blend itself into your work space in a manner that will make you wonder how you ever managed without it…and that effort has led us to the birth of yet another all-new font for you! And this one like most of our others has a niche appeal although it is versatile as versatile can be. Now this is a font that can pretty much fit the bill when you want to send out an exclusive appeal but yet not overly formal. It is styled with fonts that cry out ‘eliteness’ and exclusivity, but without the part where it becomes so exclusive and classy that it goes way over people’s heads! The ‘Egregio’ can still connect on a very personal, almost friendly level with your audience while it remains in a class of its very own!

Low stroke contrast, generous spacing, and fine-grained weights from Light to Extra Bold make FF Hertz a workhorse text typeface which holds up well under today’s widely varying output conditions from print to screen. The quite dark Book style works well on e-ink displays which usually tend to thin out letters, as well as in print when you want to evoke the solid letter image of the hot-metal type era. Two sizes of Small Caps are included: A larger size for abbreviations and acronyms, and a smaller size matching the height of the lowercase letters. FF Hertz is a uniwidth design, that means each letter occupies the same space in all weights. This feature allows the user to switch between weights (but not between Roman and Italic styles) without text reflow. Jens Kutilek began work on FF Hertz in 2012. From a drawing exercise on a low-resolution grid (a technique proposed by Tim Ahrens to avoid fiddling with details too early), it soon evolved into a bigger project combining a multitude of influences which up until that point had only been floating around in his head, including his mother’s 1970s typewriter with its wonderful numbers, Hermann Zapf’s Melior as well as his forgotten Mergenthaler Antiqua (an interpretation of the Modern genre), and old German cartographic lettering styles. Jens likes to imagine FF Hertz used in scientific books or for an edition of Lovecraftian horror stories.

P22 Brass Script is a new font from an old source. This script font was discovered in a booklet from Dornemann & Co. of Magdeburg Germany, circa 1910. The book was titled Messingschriften fur Handvergoldung, which roughly translates to “Brass types for hand foil stamping.” The mini catalog called this type simply “Script.” It has not been previously digitized or seen in standard metal type form. The antique specimen book featured most of the characters needed for a full alphabet, but a number of letters were not shown. Since no other examples of this style could be found, P22 enlisted the assistance of master calligrapher Michael Clark to draw the missing characters in the same style as the original. The style is very loosely based on the secretarial hands and reminiscent of “French Hand” with a very early 20th century, pre-modern feel. It has an unusual flow that is neither too casual nor too formal. The font would be useful for wedding invitations or packaging and advertising. P22 Brass Script Pro features include: automatic ligatures for common pairs such as ll, tt, qu and a variety of f ligatures, full CE language support including Turkish and Romanian and a variety of swash underscores for different length words that can be added manually in OpenType ready applications with the glyph palette or with the contextual alternates. The length of the word will automatically select the best length of swash for the work.

Futura is the fully developed prototype of the twentieth century Geometric Sanserif. The form is ancient, Greek capitals being inscribed by the Cretans twenty-five hundred years ago at the time of Pythagoras in the Gortyn Code, by the Imperial Romans, notably in the tomb of the Scipios, by classical revival architects in eighteenth century London, which formed the basis for Caslon’s first sanserif typeface in 1817. Some aspects of the Geometric sanserif survived in the flood of Gothics that followed, particularly in the work of Vincent Figgins. In 1927, stimulated by the Bauhaus experiments in geometric form and the Ludwig & Mayer typeface Erbar, Paul Renner sketched a set of Bauhaus forms; working from these, the professional letter design office at Bauer reinvented the sanserif based on strokes of even weight, perfect circles and isosceles triangles and brought the Universal Alphabet and Erbar to their definitive typographic form. Futura became the most popular sanserif of the middle years of the twentieth century. Ironically, given its generic past, Futura is the only typeface to have been granted registration under copyright as an original work of art, and, further irony, given the key part played by the Bauer letter design office, the full copyright belongs to Renner and his heirs. This decision in a Frankfurt court implies that a further small group of older typefaces may also be covered by copyright in Germany, particularly those designed for Stempel by Hermann Zapf. This situation appears to be limited to this small group of faces in this one country, although protection of designers’ rights in newer typefaces is now possible in France and Germany through legislation deriving from the 1973 Vienna Treaty for the protection of typefaces. Mergenthaler’s Spartan is a close copy of Futura; Ludlow’s Tempo is less close. Functional yet friendly, logical yet not overintellectual, German yet anti-Nazi... with hindsight the choice of Futura as Volkswagen’s ad font since the 1960s looks inevitable.

Many typefaces are distinctive or attractive at the expense of legibility and versatility. Not so the Optima® family. Simultaneously standing out and fitting in, there are few projects or imaging environments outside of its range. Although Optima is almost always grouped with sans serif typefaces, it should be considered a serifless roman. True to its Roman heritage, Optima has wide, full-bodied characters – especially in the capitals. Only the E, F and L deviate with narrow forms. Consistent with other Zapf designs, the cap S in Optima appears slightly top-heavy with a slight tilt to the right. The M is splayed, and the N, like a serif design, has light vertical strokes. The lowercase a and g in Optima are high-legibility two-storied designs. Optima can be set within a wide choice of line spacing values – from very tight to very open. In fact, there are few limits to the amount of white space that can be added between lines of text. Optima also benefits from a wide range of letter spacing capability. It can be set quite tight, or even slightly open – especially the capitals. If there are any guidelines, Optima should be set more open than tight. It’s not that readability is affected that much when Optima is set on the snug side; it’s just that the unhurried elegance and light gray typographic color created by the face are disrupted when letters are set too tight. Optima is also about as gregarious as a typeface can be. It mixes well with virtually any serif design and a surprisingly large number of sans serif faces. The Optima family is available in six weights, from roman to extra black, each with an italic counterpart. In addition, the family is available as a suite of OpenType® Pro fonts, providing for the automatic insertion of small caps, ligatures and alternate characters, in addition to offering an extended character set supporting most Central European and many Eastern European languages. When you’re ready to find its perfect pairing, browse these fantastic matches: Monotype Century Old Style™, Dante®, Frutiger® Serif, Joanna® Nova, Malabar™, and Soho®.

Many typefaces are distinctive or attractive at the expense of legibility and versatility. Not so the Optima® family. Simultaneously standing out and fitting in, there are few projects or imaging environments outside of its range. Although Optima is almost always grouped with sans serif typefaces, it should be considered a serifless roman. True to its Roman heritage, Optima has wide, full-bodied characters – especially in the capitals. Only the E, F and L deviate with narrow forms. Consistent with other Zapf designs, the cap S in Optima appears slightly top-heavy with a slight tilt to the right. The M is splayed, and the N, like a serif design, has light vertical strokes. The lowercase a and g in Optima are high-legibility two-storied designs. Optima can be set within a wide choice of line spacing values – from very tight to very open. In fact, there are few limits to the amount of white space that can be added between lines of text. Optima also benefits from a wide range of letter spacing capability. It can be set quite tight, or even slightly open – especially the capitals. If there are any guidelines, Optima should be set more open than tight. It’s not that readability is affected that much when Optima is set on the snug side; it’s just that the unhurried elegance and light gray typographic color created by the face are disrupted when letters are set too tight. Optima is also about as gregarious as a typeface can be. It mixes well with virtually any serif design and a surprisingly large number of sans serif faces. The Optima family is available in six weights, from roman to extra black, each with an italic counterpart. In addition, the family is available as a suite of OpenType® Pro fonts, providing for the automatic insertion of small caps, ligatures and alternate characters, in addition to offering an extended character set supporting most Central European and many Eastern European languages. When you’re ready to find its perfect pairing, browse these fantastic matches: Monotype Century Old Style™, Dante®, Frutiger® Serif, Joanna® Nova, Malabar™ and Soho®.

Italian type design master Aldo Novarese was not famous for making calligraphic designs, nor had he any interest in them. He is much better known for his text faces, and quite innovative sans serif and decorative designs which became the definition of what we now know as techno and modern. But in 1968, Novarese surprised everyone with a fantastic flowing deco script entitled Elite. Novarese's formula of simple soft curves and toned-down swashes makes for one of the most unique alphabets ever seen, not to mention one of the best flowing and most legible scripts. This is now its digital incarnation, named Fontella. Fontella's applications are virtually limitless. This is the sort of script that can feel at home pretty much anywhere; a sign, a fridge magnet, a bumper sticker, a greeting card, a movie poster, a book cover, music artwork, magazine ads, newsletter headlines, etc. Digitized from original specimen and expanded with a few built-in alternates and ligatures by Rebecca Alaccari, the font was named after the famed jazz singer Fontella Bass. These letters are just so sweet they had to be called Fontella.