TT Ricordi Marmo useful links: Specimen | Graphic presentation | Customization options TT Ricordi Marmo extends the series of experimental projects within the TT Ricordi fonts collection. The main goal of the TT Ricordi project is to look for gems in old signs and on stone and bringing those inscriptions back to life in the form of contemporary fonts with the umbrella name TT Ricordi. TT Ricordi Marmo is an original experimental project by Eugene Tantsurin inspired by inscriptions at Basilica di Santa Croce in Florence. Working on it, we wanted to create a contemporary typeface that would unite the elements of a Florentine sans-serif mixed with more traditional visual solutions typical for the period's serifs. As a result, we got a bright and somewhat provocative typeface with irregular serif distribution, some unusual contours and a free spirit. In small body size TT Ricordi Marmo makes a neutral impression, but as the size gets bigger, the user is taken on a playful quest to search for interesting moves, graphic peculiarities and unusual solutions. TT Ricordi Marmo is great for poster design, packaging, and setting large and medium-sized inscriptions. Thanks to its idiosyncrasy, the typeface may look nice both at a poster in a grand academic theater and at an acid rave party. You can find a set of icon patterns that can be used in several ways. First, you can substitute letters with these patterns, thus getting an inscription with a visible graphic element. Then you can also construct borders and interval marks, or just use them as icons. All patterns are perfectly adapted to the design of letters in the font. TT Ricordi Marmo consists of 2 styles and one variable font. Each of the styles contains over 630 glyphs and 18 OpenType features. As we have conceived TT Ricordi Marmo as a poster typeface from the very beginning, it features small capitals instead of lowercase characters. In addition, the typeface has a set of interesting ligatures, stylistic alternates, pointers, hands, and pattern icons. TT Ricordi Marmo OpenType features list: AALT, CCMP, LOCL, NUMR, ORDN, TNUM, PNUM, CASE, SS01 (Alternative latin E), SS02 (Alternative Eszett), SS03 (Alternative Cyrillic I), SS04 ( Alternative Amper- sand), SS05 (Romanian Comma Accent), SS06 (Dutch IJ), SS07 (Catalan Ldot), DLIG, CALT, SALT.

The Azbuka™ typeface family has its roots in a fairly pedestrian source. “The idea came in part from an old sign in London that read ‘SPRINKLER STOP VALVE’,” says Dave Farey, designer of the typeface. Like all good sign spotters, Farey took a photograph of the sign and filed it away for possible use in a lettering or typeface design project. In Prague a number of years later, the street signs reminded Farey of the London signage - and his camera came out again. Comparing the two back in his studio, he realized that the signs from London and Prague were not as similar as he initially thought. However, they were enough alike to serve as the foundation for a no-frills, 21st century sans serif typeface family. “I wanted to draw a wide range of weights, italic and condensed designs all in one go,” recalls Farey, “rather than add on to the family later.” His goal was to create a family that could be used for text and display copy, with sufficient weights to provide a broad typographic palette. Indeed, the completed design, created in collaboration with fellow type designer Richard Dawson, consists of twenty typefaces in eight weights ranging from extra light to extra black. The five mid-range designs have complementary italics. Seven condensed designs round out the family. Azbuka’s lighter weights perform remarkably well in blocks of text composition. “They’re clean and legible - and perhaps a little boring,” says Farey, “but they are perfect for copy with a down-to-earth, yet contemporary flavor.” The heavier weights are equally well suited for a variety of display uses. The designs are authoritative but not overbearing and will readily make a strong statement without calling attention to themselves. The condensed weights of Azbuka are ideal for those instances where you have a lot to say - and not much room to say it. The name Azbuka? It’s Russian for “alphabet.” And what more appropriate name could there be for this utilitarian, industrial-strength type family than alphabet? The Azbuka family is available as a suite of OpenType Pro fonts. Graphic communicators can now work with this versatile design while taking advantage of OpenType’s capabilities. The Azbuka Pro fonts also offer an extended character set that supports most Central European and many Eastern European languages

Actium is a contemporary multilingual sans serif typeface developed to help perfect typography automatically. Type Mafia has focussed on words with odd combinations of capital letters and numbers, such as product names and postal codes such as WD40 and H1N5, jump out of the text. They sit awkwardly together as the numerals have been designed to work with the lowercase, not the uppercase letters – affecting readability.To fix this Type Mafia invented Smart Capo™. Smart Capo™ Smart Capo is a feature that automatically activates once you type an uppercase letter together with a number. When a capital letter is sat next to a numeral, Smart Capo converts the letter to a mid-cap — a contemporary alternative to small caps — and the default old-style numeral to a lining numeral. Actium’s mid-caps and lining numerals have been designed with the same height (between cap and x-height) so they sit comfortably next to each other and fit more harmoniously into text. Smart Capo applies equal attention to capitalised words without any numbers, such as NAVO and USA, and are also automatically set into mid-capitals. Working on its own, Smart Capo saves time and money for the typographer — taking the pain out of text formatting — and makes it a more pleasurable experience for the reader. This feature is made possible by the use of ‘contextual alternates’, an OpenType feature used in modern font software, working with a set of characters specially designed at mid-cap height. By default these changes automatically take place so it doesn't need to be switched on, it will just work. Actium Actium’s design has an unusual diagonal contrast — much more common in a serifed face than in a sans serif — giving it more bite. The typeface looks elegant when set in large sizes and remains very legible when shown in small sizes. The family consists of six weights in two styles, making a dozen fonts. Weights range from light to black in roman and true italic. All fonts are fully loaded with functional elements. Actium boasts an extended Latin character set and with Greek. This means a wide range of Western languages are supported: perfect for use in bilingual publications and packaging. For numerals, each font includes old-style and lining figures in both proportional and tabular widths, with superiors and inferiors. These allow you to select the right set of numbers for the right task.

Why do we need another typeface? This is a prickly question often asked of typeface designers. Depending on who you ask, the answer in simplified form is usually one of two: 1. As the basis of written communication, type design carries social responsibility, so we must continue to improve legibility. 2. Type design is a form of artistic expression. Without art, life is not worth living. The best work, of course, accomplishes both. Xavier Dupré, the designer of the Malaga typeface family, has at least one leg securely planted in the latter notion. He believes, like others, that within typeface design most legibility needs have been worked out and that today we are satisfying aesthetic desires. We design typefaces to differentiate our communications. Type design is primarily a formal exercise reflecting our personal quirks, technological obsessions, and cultural heritage. In case of Dupré’s work, issues of cultural heritage and personal quirks are of particular consequence. An incessant traveler, he visited the following countries during the development of the Malaga type family: Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, France, Belgium, and finally, Spain, where his choice for the name Malaga originates (Malaga is a port city in southern Spain). Dupré’s home is where his laptop is. He travels with a 12- or 15 inch PowerBook, without a printer, and with sporadic access to his reference books and other historical documents. All he needs is a table and chair. He even learned to design without a mouse since hotel and cafe tables are often too small to also fit a mousepad. Dupré is the new global designer who can take disparate influences and fluidly process the information into a coherent whole. Malaga is a case in point. It is inspired by ideas ranging from blackletter to Latin fonts, and from the Quattrocento’s first Venetian antiquas to brush stroke types. This makes Malaga a richly animated font saturated with unorthodox detail. Its black and bold weights are particularly suited for headlines and short texts, while the subtle modulation and moderate contrast in the regular and medium weights makes it perfectly readable in extended text settings. While Malaga doesn’t claim to resolve any particular legibility issues, it is nonetheless perfectly readable and will impart any design with a healthy dose of visual character.

Irish Penny is based on the lettering from Percy Metcalfe's beautiful and influential pre-decimal coinage of Ireland, the Barnyard Collection. The font is more monoline than is conventional for Irish insular styles, almost giving the feel of a modern soft sans, and perfect for small and large scale display purposes. Irish Penny contains a full complement of Latin Extended-A accented characters, Irish lenited consonants with the dot accent, and the tironian et which is commonly used in Ireland instead of an ampersand. Lowercase characters are provided small caps style, slightly reduced in size and subtly thickened in weight. The licensed font comes with a faux italic, and although obliques are not common among insular typefaces, Irish Penny Italic is a useful smart and sporty extra. Although the insular G/g is usually understood, Irish Penny also includes a more latinised option as an alternate G/g. The supplemental 'Irish Penny Alternate G' font places the latinised G and g characters at the normal G/g keystrokes, and makes the original insular glyphs the alternates. An alternate E/e with an angled crossbar is also included. The font contains a selection of discretionary ligatures, these include the ligatures that were used for pre-decimal coins: AC/ac, AE/ae, AL/al, AO/ao, AU/au, AT/at (halfpenny, half crown), AX/ax, AY/ay CA/ca, CC/cc, CE/ce, CO/co (half crown), CU/cu, CY/cy EA/ea (halfpenny, half crown), EC/ec, EE/ee, ET/et, EU/eu (sixpence), EY/ey FE/fe (farthing), FF/ff, FL/fl (florin) GI/gi (penny), GU/gu KA/ka, KE/ke, KI/ki, KO/ko, KT/kt, KU/ku LA/la, LE/le (halfpenny, half crown), LL/ll (shilling), LO/lo, LT/lt, LU/lu, LY/ly RA/ra, RC/rc, RE/re (three/sixpence), RH/rh, RI/ri (florin), RK/rk, RN/rn, RM/rm, RO/ro (half crown), RR/rr, RT/rt, RU/ru, RY/ry TA/ta, TE/te, TO/to, TU/tu NOTE - Irish Penny contains some characters that are not accessible directly from your keyboard, but which may be copied from a font viewer such as Character Map, Font Book or FontExplorer, and pasted into documents. They can also be accessed from the Glyphs browsers within OpenType-aware applications like Adobe InDesign and Illustrator, and Affinity Photo and Publisher.

Rahere Esoteric is a gothic-flavoured, quasi-Roman display font with an eccentric persona and more quirks than a Tim Burton film. A member of the extended Rahere typeface family, it’s the enigmatic cousin of Rahere Roman Display & Rahere Sans. This is a niche display font that doesn’t try to please everyone. Rahere Esoteric revels in its mystical aura, using a bewildering array of ligatures to magically transmute itself as characters loop, curl, jerk and strut, randomly connecting and disconnecting into words like a retro-futuristic steam train clattering along a disused railway track, challenging and delighting the reader at the same time. To add more sparkle, there are alternatives, inferior and superior caps plus a [Wicca] basketful of symbols, ornaments, weird faces and even a snake-infused ampersand. Whilst Rahere Esoteric has been designed primarily as an all-caps font, the lowercase slots contain small caps with corresponding numerals. However, because this is an arcane, unpredictable font, order and regularity are frowned upon, which means there are no tabular numerals – so company reports or accounts are a solid no! Unless they’re for the Golden Circle of Alchemists PLC or Gothic Blackstar Corporation. It is ideal for all things pagan, esoteric, alchemy, other-worldly or magic-related projects and particularly useful for music genres across the Gothic / Darkwave / Ethereal spectrum. What about legibility? Hey, look into my eyes: Esoteric is all about the mystique. If a secondary font is needed for the important stuff, I recommend its cousin, Rahere Sans, which pairs beautifully with this display font and is perfect for long passages or small text. The initial idea for Rahere Esoteric came about during a visit to Whitby, a small coastal town in Yorkshire, UK and famous for its inclusion in Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula. A Steampunk festival was in full swing and the narrow streets of the town centre were teeming with people adorned in a glorious fusion of clothing and accessories influenced by a love of 19th-century life, science fiction, horror, fashion and art. I was fascinated by the juxtapositions of colour, patterns, material and style – archaic mechanical Sci-fi, gothic, the American Wild West and romantic Victorian. But what intrigued me the most, somehow, all the disparate elements worked as a whole. Thus, like Frankenstein, this font jolted into existence. Supported languages include Western Europe, Vietnamese, Central/Eastern Europe, Baltic, Turkish and Romanian.

The purpose of the original DIN 1451 standard was to lay down a style of lettering which is timeless and easily legible. Unfortunately, these early letters lacked elegance and were not properly designed for typographic applications. Ever since its first publication in the 1930’s, several type foundries adopted the original designs for digital photocomposition. By early 2000, it became apparent that the existing DIN-based fonts did not fulfil the ever-increasing demand for a diverse set of weights and additional support for non-Latin languages. Parachute® was set out to fill this gap by introducing the PF DIN series which has become ever since the most comprehensive and sophisticated set of DIN typefaces. It was based on the original standards but was specifically designed to fit typographic requirements. Its letterforms divert from the stiff geometric structure of the original and introduce instead elements which are familiar, softer and easier to read. The first set of fonts was completed in 2002 as a group of 3 families which included condensed and compressed versions. With its vast array of weights, the extended language support, but most of all its meticulous and elaborate design, it has proved itself valuable to numerous design agencies around the world. Ever since its first release, it has been used in diverse editorials, packaging, branding and advertising campaigns as well as a great number of websites. It was quoted by Publish magazine as being “an overkill series for complex corporate identity projects”. The whole PF DIN Text type system (with normal, condensed and compressed styles) includes 45 weights from Hairline to Extra Black including true-italics. Additionally, every font in the Pro series is powered by 270 very useful symbols for packaging, environmental graphics, signage, transportation, computing, fabric care. There are 2 versions to choose from: The PRO version is the most powerful. All weights support Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Central/Eastern European, Romanian, Baltic and Turkish, with 20 advanced opentype features including small caps. The standard STD version is more economic. All weights support Latin, Central/Eastern European, Romanian, Baltic and Turkish, with 18 advanced opentype features including small caps. In 2010 Parachute® released 4 new families DIN Monospace, DIN Stencil, DIN Text Arabic and DIN Text Universal. All these are complemented by the popular DIN Display version. Altogether the Parachute DIN series is a set of 8 superfamilies with a total of 96 weights.

Rian Hughes’ 15th collection of fonts, “112 Hours”, is entirely dedicated to numbers. Culled from a myriad of sources – clock faces, tickets, watches house numbers – it is an eclectic and wide-ranging set. Each font contains only numerals and related punctuation – no letters. A new book has been designed by Hughes to show the collection, and includes sample settings, complete character sets, source material and an introduction. This is available print-to-order on Blurb in paperback and hardback: http://www.blurb.com/b/5539073-112-hours-hardback http://www.blurb.com/b/5539045-112-hours-paperback From the introduction: The idea for this, the fifteenth Device Fonts collection, began when I came across an online auction site dedicated to antique clocks. I was mesmerized by the inventive and bizarre numerals on their faces. Shorn of the need to extend the internal logic of a typeface through the entire alphabet, the designers of these treasures were free to explore interesting forms and shapes that would otherwise be denied them. Given this horological starting point, I decided to produce 12 fonts, each featuring just the numbers from 1 to 12 and, where appropriate, a small set of supporting characters — in most cases, the international currency symbols, a colon, full stop, hyphen, slash and the number sign. 10, 11 and 12 I opted to place in the capital A, B and C slots. Each font is shown in its entirety here. I soon passed 12, so the next logical finish line was 24. Like a typographic Jack Bauer, I soon passed that too -— the more I researched, the more I came across interesting and unique examples that insisted on digitization, or that inspired me to explore some new design direction. The sources broadened to include tickets, numbering machines, ecclesiastical brass plates and more. Though not derived from clock faces, I opted to keep the 1-12 conceit for consistency, which allowed me to design what are effectively numerical ligatures. I finally concluded one hundred fonts over my original estimate at 112. Even though it’s not strictly divisible by 12, the number has a certain symmetry, I reasoned, and was as good a place as any to round off the project. An overview reveals a broad range that nonetheless fall into several loose categories. There are fairly faithful revivals, only diverging from their source material to even out inconsistencies and regularize weighting or shape to make them more functional in a modern context; designs taken directly from the source material, preserving all the inky grit and character of the original; designs that are loosely based on a couple of numbers from the source material but diverge dramatically for reasons of improved aesthetics or mere whim; and entirely new designs with no historical precedent. As projects like this evolve (and, to be frank, get out of hand), they can take you in directions and to places you didn’t envisage when you first set out. Along the way, I corresponded with experts in railway livery, and now know about the history of cab side and smokebox plates; I travelled to the Musée de l’imprimerie in Nantes, France, to examine their numbering machines; I photographed house numbers in Paris, Florence, Venice, Amsterdam and here in the UK; I delved into my collection of tickets, passes and printed ephemera; I visited the Science Museum in London, the Royal Signals Museum in Dorset, and the Museum of London to source early adding machines, war-time telegraphs and post-war ration books. I photographed watches at Worthing Museum, weighing scales large enough to stand on in a Brick Lane pub, and digital station clocks at Baker Street tube station. I went to the London Under-ground archive at Acton Depot, where you can see all manner of vintage enamel signs and woodblock type; I photographed grocer’s stalls in East End street markets; I dug out old clocks I recalled from childhood at my parents’ place, examined old manual typewriters and cash tills, and crouched down with a torch to look at my electricity meter. I found out that Jane Fonda kicked a policeman, and unusually for someone with a lifelong aversion to sport, picked up some horse-racing jargon. I share some of that research here. In many cases I have not been slavish about staying close to the source material if I didn’t think it warranted it, so a close comparison will reveal differences. These changes could be made for aesthetic reasons, functional reasons (the originals didn’t need to be set in any combination, for example), or just reasons of personal taste. Where reference for the additional characters were not available — which was always the case with fonts derived from clock faces — I have endeavored to design them in a sympathetic style. I may even extend some of these to the full alphabet in the future. If I do, these number-only fonts could be considered as experimental design exercises: forays into form to probe interesting new graphic possibilities.

Sacred letter is a font that follows the rules of calligraphy writing, but the difference is there is a natural emphasis on handwriting. The Thick and thin are not smooth to describe the flow of natural ink. The pure calligraphy tends to the classic style with nuances of the grandeur of the past. This font is more open and appears as-is. The flexibility of the style makes it can survive in the classic style and modern style. Sacred Letter is a flowing and classic handwritten font, described by an elegant touch, perfect for your dearest projects. Fall in love with its incredibly distinct and timeless style and use it to create spectacular designs! This font is PUA encoded which means you can access all of the glyphs and swashes with ease! It features a varying baseline, smooth lines, gorgeous glyphs and stunning alternates.

Chord Symbols is a font for musicians. With this font, you can quickly write beautiful chords, using only simple keyboard characters as input. Musicians tend to write chords with regular characters. They use # instead of a genuine sharp, b instead of a genuine flat, dim instead of a small circle, etc. With Chord Symbols, your chords will be better looking, more easily readable and more efficiently notated. Chord Symbols helps you to write the chords the way you like it. Whether you prefer ‘maj7’ or ‘m7’ or a small triangle for a major seventh, whether you want ‘m’, ‘mi’, ‘min’ or a horizontal line for a minor chord, this font will suit you. Chord Symbols is originally created out of the need to write chords above pop song lyrics. It is designed to also work smoothly in music notation software, like Sibelius, Finale and Encore.

'Snatched' is a spontaneous handwriting. This name is taken from the slang term in the 2022 era to describe someone or something in a positive manner. This font consists of the same uppercase and lowercase, often referred to as 'all capital letterform', complete with numerals and punctuation. Composed in tends to widen form which is more like the typical handwriting of architects. This font looks like it was written with a marker or technical pen, very bold stylish and legible. For designers this is an interesting thing, the design looks very natural and rhythmic to beautify presentations and blue prints. Can be installed for CAD programs, Sekthup and other applications. This font is very suitable for various media related to handmade, craft businesses, logos, quotes, prints, social media posts, indie business, outdoor sports and other applications to strengthen the impression of handwriting and demand attention.

Packing more copy in a narrow space is the main reason for using a condensed type. Characters with a more ovular shape tend to be less wide than their circular counterparts and will allow for more letters per line. In narrow columns for example, this typeface can provide up to 25% more copy than the regular typeface in the same space. Another reason is when a larger type size is called for — used sparingly it is useful for headings or headlines. For emphasis, narrower letters can provide a stark contrast in the flow of reading, creating impact while retaining typographic character. Condensed types can specially useful in tables and charts because typically both use few words in each block. If space now allows, you may think about the luxury of a larger point size. This optimizes space while keeping your typography more easily legible.

Sunshine is the unlikely alphabet collision of Gobbler and Liquorstore. Chank's napkin scrawl smashed into the letters commonly found on signage at the neighborhood liquor store. Gobbler's blotchy textures fragmented Liquorstore's uniform stroke. It began as a hideous lumpy thing with random vector points everywhere. Chank came to the rescue with his Alphabetician's first aid kit. He smoothed the blunt corners with a few hammer blows. He wrapped the font in extra strokes, in a sans serif Roman style, to increase its contrast. His industrial influence helped stabilize Gobbler's gloppy qualities and his grunge aesthetic softened Liquor store's checkerboard rigidity. The end result is a font with a solid structure and a painterly wiggle that creates a dirty display or a slightly clumsy text face. Because of its many detailed strokes, it tends to look a little better in print than on the web. All organic. Earthy.

I love geometric sans serifs, their crispness and rationality. Le Havre taps into this style, but for a while, I've wanted to create a font recalling the printed Futura of the 1940s, which seems to have an elusive quality all its own. After seeing an old manual on a World War II ship, I developed a plan for "Le Havre Metal" but chose to shelve the project due to Le Havre's small x-height. That's where Steagal comes in. When Robbie de Villiers and I began the Chatype project in early 2012 (a project which led one publication to label me the Edward Johnston of Chattanooga!), we started closely studying the vernacular lettering of Chattanooga. During that time, I also visited Switzerland, where I saw how designers were using a new, handmade aesthetic with a geometric base. I was motivated to make a new face combining some of these same influences. The primary inspiration for the new design came from the hand-lettering of sign painters in the United States, circa 1930s through 1950s. My Chatype research turned up a poster from the Tennessee Valley Authority in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which exhibited a number of quirks from the unique hand and style of one of these sign artists. Completing the first draft of Steagal, however, I found that the face appeared somewhat European in character. I turned then to the work of Morris Fuller Benton for a distinctly American take and discovered a number of features that would help define Steagal as a "1930s American" vernacular typeface--features I later learned also inspired Morris Fuller Benton's Eagle. The overall development of Steagal was surprisingly difficult, knowing when to deliberately distort optical artifacts and when to keep them in place. Part of type design is correcting optical illusions, and I found myself absentmindedly adjusting the optical effects. In the end, though, I was able to draw inspiration from period signs, inscriptions, period posters, and architecture while retaining just enough of the naive sensibility. Steagal has softened edges, which simulate brush strokes and retain the feeling of the human hand. The standard version has unique quirks that are not too intrusive. Overshoots have almost been eliminated, and joins have minimal corrections. The rounded forms are mathematically perfect, geometric figures without optical corrections. As a variation to the standard, the “Rough” version stands as the "bad signpainter" version with plenty of character. Steagal Regular comes in five weights and is packed with OpenType features. Steagal includes three Art Deco Alternate sets, optically compensated rounded forms, a monospaced variant, and numerous other features. In all, there are over 200 alternate characters. To see these features in action, please see the informative .pdf brochure. OpenType capable applications such as Quark or the Adobe Creative suite can take full advantage of the automatically replacing ligatures and alternates. Steagal also includes support for all Western European languages. Steagal is a great way to subtly draw attention to your work. Its unique quirks grab the eye with a authority that few typefaces possess. Embrace its vernacular, hand-brushed look, and see what this geometric sans serif can do for you.

To design a text typeface "at the top with, at the bottom without" serifs was an idea which crossed my mind at the end of the sixties. I started from the fact that what one reads in the Latin alphabet is mainly the upper half of the letters, where good distinguishableness of the individual signs, and therefore, also good legibility, is aided by serifs. The first tests of the design, by which I checked up whether the basic principle could be used also for the then current technology of setting - for double-sign matrices -, were carried out in 1970. During the first half of the seventies I created first the basic design, then also the slanted Roman and the medium types. These drawings were not very successful. My greatest concern during this initial phase was the upper case A. I had to design it in such a way that the basic principle should be adhered to and the new alphabet, at the same time, should not look too complicated. The necessary prerequisite for a design of a new alphabet for double-sign matrices, i.e. to draw each letter of all the three fonts to the same width, did not agree with this typeface. What came to the greatest harm were the two styles used for emphasis: the italics even more than the medium type. That is why I fundamentally remodelled the basic design in 1980. In the course of this work I tried to forget about the previous technological limitations and to respect only the requirements then placed on typefaces intended for photosetting. As a matter of fact, this was not very difficult; this typeface was from the very beginning conceived in such a way as to have a large x-height of lower-case letters and upper serifs that could be joined without any problems in condensed setting. I gave much more thought to the proportional relations of the individual letters, the continuity of their outer and inner silhouettes, than to the requirements of their production. The greatest number of problems arose in the colour balancing of the individual signs, as it was necessary to achieve that the upper half of each letter should have a visual counterbalance in its lower, simpler half. Specifically, this meant to find the correct shape and degree of thickening of the lower parts of the letters. These had to counterbalance the upper parts of the letters emphasized by serifs, yet they should not look too romantic or decorative, for otherwise the typeface might lose its sober character. Also the shape, length and thickness of the upper serifs had to be resolved differently than in the previous design. In the seventies and at the beginning of the eighties a typeface conceived in this way, let alone one intended for setting of common texts in magazines and books, was to all intents and purposes an experiment with an uncertain end. At this time, before typographic postmodernism, it was not the custom to abandon in such typefaces the clear-cut formal categories, let alone to attempt to combine the serif and sans serif principles in a single design. I had already designed the basic, starting, alphabets of lower case and upper case letters with the intention to derive further styles from them, differing in colour and proportions. These fonts were not to serve merely for emphasis in the context of the basic design, but were to function, especially the bold versions, also as independent display alphabets. At this stage of my work it was, for a change, the upper case L that presented the greatest problem. Its lower left part had to counterbalance the symmetrical two-sided serif in the upper half of the letter. The ITC Company submitted this design to text tests, which, in their view, were successful. The director of this company Aaron Burns then invited me to add further styles, in order to create an entire, extensive typeface family. At that time, without the possibility to use a computer and given my other considerable workload, this was a task I could not manage. I tried to come back to this, by then already very large project, several times, but every time some other, at the moment very urgent, work diverted me from it. At the beginning of the nineties several alphabets appeared which were based on the same principle. It seemed to me that to continue working on my semi-finished designs was pointless. They were, therefore, abandoned until the spring of 2005, when František Štorm digitalized the basic design. František gave the typeface the working title Areplos and this name stuck. Then he made me add small capitals and the entire bold type, inducing me at the same time to consider what to do with the italics in order that they might be at least a little italic in character, and not merely slanted Roman alphabets, as was my original intention. In the course of the subsequent summer holidays, when the weather was bad, we met in his little cottage in South Bohemia, between two ponds, and resuscitated this more than twenty-five-years-old typeface. It was like this: We were drinking good tea, František worked on the computer, added accents and some remaining signs, inclined and interpolated, while I was looking over his shoulder. There is hardly any typeface that originated in a more harmonious setting. Solpera, summer 2005 I first encountered this typeface at the exhibition of Contemporary Czech Type Design in 1982. It was there, in the Portheim Summer Palace in Prague, that I, at the age of sixteen, decided to become a typographer. Having no knowledge about the technologies, the rules of construction of an alphabet or about cultural connections, I perceived Jan Solpera's typeface as the acme of excellence. Now, many years after, replete with experience of revitalization of typefaces of both living and deceased Czech type designers, I am able to compare their differing approaches. Jan Solpera put up a fight against the digital technology and exerted creative pressure to counteract my rather loose approach. Jan prepared dozens of fresh pencil drawings on thin sketching paper in which he elaborated in detail all the style-creating elements of the alphabet. I can say with full responsibility that I have never worked on anything as meticulous as the design of the Areplos typeface. I did not invent this name; it is the name of Jan Solpera's miniature publishing house, in which he issued for example an enchanting series of memoirs of a certain shopkeeper of Jindrichuv Hradec. The idea that the publishing house and the typeface might have the same name crossed my mind instinctively as a symbol of the original designation of Areplos - to serve for text setting. What you can see here originated in Trebon and in a cottage outside the village of Domanín - I even wanted to rename my firm to The Trebon Type Foundry. When mists enfold the pond and gloom pervades one's soul, the so-called typographic weather sets in - the time to sit, peer at the monitor and click the mouse, as also our students who were present would attest. Areplos is reminiscent of the essential inspirational period of a whole generation of Czech type designers - of the seventies and eighties, which were, however, at the same time the incubation period of my generation. I believe that this typeface will be received favourably, for it represents the better aspect of the eighties. Today, at the time when the infection by ITC typefaces has not been quite cured yet, it does absolutely no harm to remind ourselves of the high quality and timeless typefaces designed then in this country.In technical terms, this family consists of two times four OpenType designs, with five types of figures, ligatures and small capitals as well as an extensive assortment of both eastern and western diacritics. I can see as a basic text typeface of smaller periodicals and informative job-prints, a typeface usable for posters and programmes of various events, but also for corporate identity. Štorm, summer 2005

PF Champion Script Pro is perhaps the most advanced and powerful calligraphic family ever made. It received an award for Excellence in Type Design from the International Type Design Competition ‘Modern Cyrillic 2009’ which was held in Moscow. Most recently, it received another award from the 3rd International Eastern Type Design Competition - Granshan Awards 2010. This typeface was first presented in June 2007 at the 3rd International Conference on Typography and Visual Communication (ICTVC) and was met with rave reviews. It is based mainly on the manuscripts of the 18th century English calligrapher Joseph Champion. Developed over a period of two and a half years, each one of the 2 weights is loaded with 4300 glyphs(!), offering simultaneous support for all European languages based on the Latin, Greek and Cyrillic scripts. Furthermore, a wide selection of alternate forms and ligatures is included for all languages, in order to accommodate diverse design aesthetics. These alternates are either applied automatically through an advanced programming scheme, or manually through several OpenType features. An attempt was made to design a contemporary script typeface with classic roots, by following certain guidelines, i.e. lowercase characters were designed so they are less inclined, have a higher x-height and are less condensed than the original. Several characters were stripped-off their connecting lines in order to enhance legibility. Four sets of alternate swashed capitals as well as a plethora of ornaments and frames (117) was included. Small caps and their alternate forms were designed to replace the capitals which disrupt the flow of text within a sentence with their extravagant swashes. All characters were carefully designed with the proper weight in order to sustain harsh printing conditions (on special papers), a situation which affects mainly the light connecting parts of calligraphic typefaces. Finally, it was programmed in such a way as to preserve handwriting qualities, by designing an extensive array of ligatures and alternate glyphs in all languages, never before released or incorporated within the same font.

Gryffensee is designed to be the Futura of blackletter, combining the time-honored gravity and relentlessness of the Gothic script with the clean, contemporary freshness of the geometric sans. Built from a tightly controlled inventory of lines, arcs, sharp cuts, and OpenType features, Gryffensee was born and raised in the digital age, yet retains the powerful charisma and human warmth of its mediaeval blackletter ancestors. As a result, it excels in a wide range of display settings, logotypes, and short text. Unlike most conventional blackletters, it even handles all-caps usage with grace, and includes an extensive Cyrillic character set (in the Pro version). Apart from a generous range of automatic ligatures and contextual alternates, Gryffensee offers stylistic alternates that allow users to customize its appearance to their tastes. The capital letters |AGHIKZ| come in alternate cuts that trade traditional shapes for increased legibility, while the letter |s| appears in three cuts, each with a unique, distinct flavor. All these options are accessible through OpenType stylistic sets in the main Latin font, Gryffensee Eins. For easy use in applications without OpenType support, we provide two additional Latin fonts (Gryffensee Zwei and Drei) in which these options replace the default cuts. Finally, Gryffensee Pro offers all the functionality of Gryffensee Eins, plus Cyrillic support. My intention to devise a contemporary geometric blackletter was inspired by four hand-painted letters, |ABCD|, in Sasha Prood�s online portfolio. I later found out that he had, in turn, taken those letters from an existing font, Bastard, by Jonathan Barnbrook. Luckily, by that time my project had taken on a life of its own. Gryffensee is an original design that bears only the most superficial resemblance to Bastard. Gryffensee is a mediaeval spelling of the lake Greifensee near which I grew up. It is pronounced [?gri?f?n?se?], or "GRIEF-un-say" in English approximation. This font is dedicated to Simone.