Mantika Book expands the Mantika super family: a contemporary serif font with a soft, yet robust character and a classic lookMantika Book, an Antiqua, is the third member of the Mantika super family, which consists of the Mantika Sans and Mantika Informal. Designer Jürgen Weltin has gone back to the roots of his font, which he had originally derived from a Renaissance Antiqua. These origins are recognizable in the first member of the Mantika family, Mantika Sans, in the form of carefully suggested line use and a contrast in the weights that recalls the Antiqua. This solid sans serif, optimized for use in text, also has a particularly energetic and dynamically designed italic. Mantika Informal also brings to mind a cursive font at first glance; ultimately, however, it is not easily categorized. Its light, organic shapes combine the informally flowing style of cursive handwriting with the open and airy form and contrast of a humanist sans serif. The shapes in the serif Mantika Book are also based on the Renaissance Antiqua, just like the other members of the Mantika super family. However, the contrast in the weights is somewhat stronger than is conventional for this genre, and the serifs are characteristically asymmetrical, with slanted ends. Lightly grooved stems with an implied curvature in the lower-case letters as well as dots whose shape flirts with a fountain pen lend the Mantika Book a dynamic and particularly friendly character. Details like the open "g" or the contoured foot of the "k" emphasize this dynamism. The letters of Mantika Book have the same large x-height as the other members of the super family, but are equipped with somewhat longer ascenders and descenders.

The Dellgado is the font of choice for writing things beyond words. This typeface is designed with great detail to convey stylish elegance. So, it can be said, the character of the transformation is very beautiful, a kind of classic ornamental copper script. The Dellgado provides alternative variants of most fonts, binders and many calligraphy tips, ideal for elegant labels, high-end packaging, stationery and compositions for certain brands, beautiful titles, paragraphs, letters and short text, intended for read only with the eyes or meant to be whispered into someone's ear. The Dellgado includes various language support. It features OpenType with alternative styles and elegant binders. The OpenType features don't work automatically, but you can access them manually and for best results your creativity will be required in combining variations of these Glyphs. And also a touch of ornament makes this font look elegant. To enable the OpenType Stylistic alternative, you need a program that supports OpenType features such as Adobe Illustrator CS, Adobe Indesign & CorelDraw X6-X7, Microsoft Word 2010 or a later version. (Windows), Font Book (Mac) or a software program such as PopChar (for Windows and Mac). How to access all alternative characters using Adobe Illustrator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzwjMkbB-wQ How to use the font style set in Microsoft Word 2010 or later versions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVJlZQ3EZU0 There are additional ways to access the alternative/swash, using the Character Map (Windows), Nexus Font (Windows) Font Book (Mac) or a software program such as PopChar (for Windows and Mac). How to access all alternative characters, using the Windows Character Map with Photoshop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go9vacoYmBw If you need help or advice, please contact me by email Regards Mova Pista

Shueitai is a typeface that has been undergoing development for more than a century, starting from the days when Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. (DNP) was still known as Shueisha. As Japan underwent rapid modernization during the early years of the Meiji era, Shueisha, believing that printing was a business befitting a modern civilized society, began operations with a focus on letterpress. Before long the company expanded into developing its own typefaces. In 1912 it completed a full range of Mincho type, in sizes from Sho-go (#0 size, 42pt) through Hachi-go (#8, 4pt), which it called "Shueitai" a new style that came to form one of the two mainstreams of Japanese typefaces and continues to have a significant influence on font design even today. The Shueitai typeface is distinguished by abundant variations matching the size of type and the changing demands of the times. Whether it is the spirited and powerful Sho-go, the delicate and flowing San-go (#3, 16pt), or the bright and solidly reassuring Shuei-Mincho L, all Shueitai typefaces share a vibrant brushwork that adds an expression of eloquence and a burst of brilliance to every printed word. Currently, Shueitai is composed of 17 kinds of fonts useful for various purposes. The world has witnessed vast changes in the environment surrounding the printed world, with the tran-sition first from letterpress to Desktop Publishing, and most recently to e-books. But no matter how this environment might evolve, the written word remains the basis of communication, and the importance of beautiful and readable typefaces stays unchanged. In preparation for the changes that will inevitably come during the future, DNP will continue to evolve the Shueitai designs from now on. Through its continual reinvention, Shueitai, a typeface consistently adopted at the vanguard of the industry, perhaps represents Japanese innovation at its very best.

Monotype Imaging is pleased to present David Hadash (New" David), the full family of typefaces by Ismar David, in its intended authentic form. The Estate of Ismar David has sought to revive this jewel of Twentieth-Century design by granting an exclusive license to Monotype Imaging to implement it in industry-standard format. Never before has the typeface in its full set of sub-styles been made available to the design community. David Hadash consists of three style families, Formal, Script, and Sans. Each of these appears in three weigths: regular, medium, and bold. Originally devised as a companion to the upright Formal style, the Script style has a beauty and grace all its own that allows it to be used for full-page settings also. While it is forward-leaning and dynamic, it does not match any of the existing cursive styles of Hebrew script. Ismar David created an eminently readable hybrid style which is like no other by inclining the forms of the upright while blending in some features of Rashi style softened with gentle curves. One can say that the Script style is the first truly italic, not just oblique, typeface for Hebrew script. Although the proportions of the Sans style are very similar to those of the Formal style, its visual impression is stunningly different. If the Formal style is believably written with a broad-point pen, the Sans is chiseled in stone. Rounded angles turn angular and stark. The end result is an informal style that evokes both ancient and contemporary impressions. David Hadash (Modern) supports the writing conventions of Modern Hebrew (including fully vocalized text) in addition to Yiddish and Ladino. David Hadash Biblical is a version of the Formal style that supports all the complexities of Biblical Hebrew, including vocalization and cantillation marks. "

Monotype Imaging is pleased to present David Hadash (New" David), the full family of typefaces by Ismar David, in its intended authentic form. The Estate of Ismar David has sought to revive this jewel of Twentieth-Century design by granting an exclusive license to Monotype Imaging to implement it in industry-standard format. Never before has the typeface in its full set of sub-styles been made available to the design community. David Hadash consists of three style families, Formal, Script, and Sans. Each of these appears in three weigths: regular, medium, and bold. Originally devised as a companion to the upright Formal style, the Script style has a beauty and grace all its own that allows it to be used for full-page settings also. While it is forward-leaning and dynamic, it does not match any of the existing cursive styles of Hebrew script. Ismar David created an eminently readable hybrid style which is like no other by inclining the forms of the upright while blending in some features of Rashi style softened with gentle curves. One can say that the Script style is the first truly italic, not just oblique, typeface for Hebrew script. Although the proportions of the Sans style are very similar to those of the Formal style, its visual impression is stunningly different. If the Formal style is believably written with a broad-point pen, the Sans is chiseled in stone. Rounded angles turn angular and stark. The end result is an informal style that evokes both ancient and contemporary impressions. David Hadash (Modern) supports the writing conventions of Modern Hebrew (including fully vocalized text) in addition to Yiddish and Ladino. David Hadash Biblical is a version of the Formal style that supports all the complexities of Biblical Hebrew, including vocalization and cantillation marks. "

Monotype Imaging is pleased to present David Hadash (New" David), the full family of typefaces by Ismar David, in its intended authentic form. The Estate of Ismar David has sought to revive this jewel of Twentieth-Century design by granting an exclusive license to Monotype Imaging to implement it in industry-standard format. Never before has the typeface in its full set of sub-styles been made available to the design community. David Hadash consists of three style families, Formal, Script, and Sans. Each of these appears in three weigths: regular, medium, and bold. Originally devised as a companion to the upright Formal style, the Script style has a beauty and grace all its own that allows it to be used for full-page settings also. While it is forward-leaning and dynamic, it does not match any of the existing cursive styles of Hebrew script. Ismar David created an eminently readable hybrid style which is like no other by inclining the forms of the upright while blending in some features of Rashi style softened with gentle curves. One can say that the Script style is the first truly italic, not just oblique, typeface for Hebrew script. Although the proportions of the Sans style are very similar to those of the Formal style, its visual impression is stunningly different. If the Formal style is believably written with a broad-point pen, the Sans is chiseled in stone. Rounded angles turn angular and stark. The end result is an informal style that evokes both ancient and contemporary impressions. David Hadash (Modern) supports the writing conventions of Modern Hebrew (including fully vocalized text) in addition to Yiddish and Ladino. David Hadash Biblical is a version of the Formal style that supports all the complexities of Biblical Hebrew, including vocalization and cantillation marks. "

Alfarooq is the most widely known epithet for the Islamic figure Umar ibn al-Khattab (c. 586 - 644) who was a leading companion and an adviser to the Islamic prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) who later became the second Muslim Caliph after Muhammad’s death (pbuh) in 632. Muslims widely know Umar ibn Al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him) as Alfarooq (i.e., he who knows and distinguishes between truth and falsehood). Alfarooq is a unique, wide, and headline Arabic display typeface. The main trait of this typeface is the novel design of its letters' tails and its dots which renders it as one of the modern stylish typefaces used for headlines and titles. This can be noticed in different letters such as Ain, Ghain, Jeem, Khah, Seen, Sheen, and others. In addition, Alfarooq font has an Arabic character set which supports Arabic, Persian, Kurdish, and Urdu letters and numerals with a limited range of specific Arabic ligatures. This typeface comes in two ultra-bold styles (i.e., Alfarooq and Alfarooq-Pro) and more than 430 distinctive glyphs with a single weight for each style. Alfarooq typeface effectively offers diverse typographic and digital usages including mainly the very large and wide poster-size works. Due to its strong baseline-stroke, Alfarooq typeface is appropriate for heading and titling works in Arabic, Persian, Kurdish, and Urdu newspapers, magazines, and other printed materials. It is also elegantly suitable for signs, book covers, advertisement light boards, street and city names, products- and services names, and titles of flyers, pamphlets, and posters. The wide style of Alfarooq font’s characters gives it more distinction when it is used in greeting cards, covers, exhibitions' signboards, external or internal walls of malls, and also the exits and entrances of airports and halls.

Garalde: the word itself sounds antique and arcane to anyone who isn’t fresh out of design school, but the sort of typeface it describes is actually quite familiar to all of us. Despite its age—born fairly early in printing’s history—the style has fared well; Garaldes are still the typefaces of choice for books and other long reading. And so we continue to see text set in old favorites—Garamond, Sabon®, and their Venetian predecessor, Bembo®. Yet many new books don’t feel as handsome and readable as older books printed in the original, metal type. The problem is that digital type revivals are typically facsimiles of their metal predecessors, merely duplicating the letterforms rather than capturing the impression—both physical and emotional—that the typefaces once left on the page. MVB Verdigris is a Garalde text face for the digital age. Inspired by the work of 16th-century punchcutters Robert Granjon (roman) and Pierre Haultin (italic), Verdigris celebrates tradition but is not beholden to it. Created specifically to deliver good typographic color as text, Mark van Bronkhorst’s design meets the needs of today’s designer using today’s paper and press. And now, as a full-featured OpenType release, it’s optimized for the latest typesetting technologies too. With MVB Verdigris Pro Text, Van Bronkhorst has revisited the family, adding small caps to all weights and styles, extensive language support, and other typographic refinements. Among the features: • Support for most Latin-based languages, including those of Central and Eastern Europe. • Precision spacing and kerning by type editor Linnea Lundquist. The fonts practically set beautiful text by themselves. • Proportional and tabular figure sets, each with oldstyle and lining forms with currency symbols to match. • Ligatures to maintain even spacing while accommodating Verdigris’ elegant, sweeping glyphs. • Numerators and denominators for automatic fractions of any denomination. • Useful, straightforward dingbats including arrows, checkboxes, and square and round bullets in three sizes. • Alternative ‘zero’ and ‘one’ oldstyle figures for those who prefer more contemporary versions over the traditional forms. • An alternative uppercase Q with a more reserved tail. • An optional, roman “Caps” font providing mid-caps, useful for titling settings, and for those situations when caps seem too big and small caps seem too small. __________ Sabon is a trademark of Linotype Corp. Bembo is a trademark of the Monotype Corporation.

Klothilde is a handwriting font which came to life in one of my doodling sessions (I must admit I still doodle with pen and paper). The idea was to create a font which resembles writing with a quill on paper with exaggerated ball terminals. Sometimes there is too much ink which makes the letters fat and the strokes uneven. The paper soaks the ink resulting in blurred line crossings. The form gets blurry. On the other hand, when the quill runs out of ink the stroke gets thinner looking like the light version of Klothilde. In order to emulate the different looks, I created six fonts with a common skeleton but different appearance which can be altered seamlessly by using the Variable Fonts technology (e.g. in latest Adobe apps or CorelDRAW Graphics Suite) along the Weight and Blurred sliders. But even without, Klothilde can be used even in longer copy. Use it from 18 pt upwards, flush left with tight leading and intersecting ascenders and descenders. Due to extensive manual kerning, it gives your text an even colour. To my knowledge, Klothilde is one of the first script Variable fonts in different weights. No, Klothilde’s letters are not connecting. But I added a whole bunch of connecting ligatures which are simply activated by the ligature feature of your app. Even Microsoft Word can do that. Thus Klothilde comes to life, as it should be expected from a handwriting font. In order to add to variety there are additional glyphs for some critical initial and standalone letters. Repeating letter combinations like nn, mm or rr are avoided by replacing the second letter by an alternative form. All features are activated by the standard ligature feature. Ligatures are available for most European languages, some even in Cyrillic (some special Serbo-Croat letters included and accessible through localization or Style Set 08 features). Romanian comma-accent characters and ligatures are accessible through the OpenType locl feature. For the topping on the cake, I added an alternate ampersand (stylistic set 1) and asterisk (ss04), an alternate Cyrillic b (ss02) and t (ss03), a few fleurons, arrows and a skull (OpenType feature ornm), fractions (frac feature), circled numbers (ss06) and an interrobang (ss07) which result in exactly 900 glyphs in each of the six fonts. There should be enough to play with. Should you be missing a special character, do give me a hint.

Introducing Fragilità, a captivating serif font that embodies the delicate balance of classic elegance and modern innovation. With its exquisitely crafted characters, high contrast, and subtle ligatures, Fragilità seamlessly blends the charm of yesterday with the spirit of today. Fragilità's unique design harmoniously blends elements of both retro and modern aesthetics. Its condensed letterforms evoke a touch of nostalgia, reminiscent of classic serif fonts from the past. Yet, the font's modern sensibilities shine through in its circular O, Q, and C characters, which retain their full circularity, adding a touch of contemporary sophistication. Fragilità's high contrast between the thick and thin strokes of its characters ensures exceptional readability across various mediums. Whether gracing the pages of a book, adorning a website, or captivating viewers on a digital screen, Fragilità remains effortlessly legible. Fragilità's extensive library of ligatures adds a touch of refinement and sophistication to your text. These intricate pairings of letters flow seamlessly together, creating a sense of continuity and elegance that elevates your written expression. Fragilità's comprehensive support for over 92 languages makes it an invaluable tool for anyone seeking a versatile font that can transcend cultural boundaries. With its adaptability to a wide range of languages, Fragilità ensures that your message resonates with audiences worldwide. We understand that quality fonts shouldn't be a luxury reserved for a select few. That's why Fragilità is available for an incredibly affordable price of just $24, making it accessible to designers and creative professionals of all levels. With its exquisite design, exceptional readability, and ligature-rich character, Fragilità is a font that will elevate your creative projects to new heights. Whether you're crafting elegant body text, designing eye-catching headlines, or creating captivating marketing materials, Fragilità will add a touch of timeless elegance and modern sophistication to your work. Embrace the delicate balance of classic charm and modern innovation with Fragilità, your new go-to serif font for all your creative endeavors. Would you like to get 5 completely free fonts worth over $75? No tricks, no hidden words, terms or anything. Just subscribe to my newsletter, make sure to check your email to approve the subscription, add me to your contacts so that the emails don't end up in spam folder and you will get 5 fonts for free. The fonts are packed with alternates, ligatures and some even come with extra goodies. https://view.flodesk.com/pages/63594052b967a943dd6cc528 Happy creating everyone!

NOTE : If you want any specific ligature included, just write me a message and I will add it with next update :) Type Master is a sophisticated and delicate serif font that exudes elegance in every aspect. With its extensive collection of over 100 ligatures and alternate glyphs, this font offers endless possibilities for creative expression. Additionally, its support for 87 languages ensures that it is versatile enough to meet the needs of any project. Whether you are designing a logo, creating marketing materials, or crafting an editorial layout, Type Master is the perfect choice for adding a touch of refinement to your work. Language Support : Afrikaans, Albanian, Asu, Basque, Bemba, Bena, Breton, Chiga, Colognian, Cornish, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Embu, English, Estonian, Faroese, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Galician, Ganda, German, Gusi,i Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jola-Fonyi, Kabuverdianu, Kalenjin, Kamba, Kikuyu, Kinyarwanda, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lower Sorbian, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malagasy, Maltese, Manx, Meru, Morisyen, North Ndebele, Norwegian, Bokmål, Norwegian, Nynorsk, Nyankole, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Rwa, Samburu, Sango, Sangu, Scottish, Gaelic, Sena, Shambala, Shona, Slovak, Soga, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Swiss, German, Taita, Teso, Turkish, Upper, Sorbian, Uzbek (Latin), Volapük, Vunjo, Walser, Welsh, Western Frisian, Zulu Ligatures : IS, FO, OD, FA, TY, EX, NN, PI, EY, AY, SS, LL, FU, US, UT, AS, AN, AM, CI, LO, ES, RO, ET, TE, CK, OH, OO, OE, OC, KO, KE, KC, CH, SE, EA, UR, RS, KS, TH, TU, TT, TK, TL, HE, RG, EP, ER, RE, RC, LE, ND, ED, OF, HA, EN, CT, ST, NT, ON, ME, MO, NG, NC, UG, UC, OU, GH, OR, OP, EE, YO, VE, IT, WE, TI, FAS, FAST, CKS, OOD, FOOD, FOO, THEY, HEY, HYP, TYP, OUT, UST, URS, WAS, THE, WES, EST, WEST, ERS, EAST, EAS, LES, ENT, FOR, OUG, OUGH, ERE, TER, YOU, VER, HER, THER, THA, AND, ITH, THI, MENT, WERE, WER, ROM, THE How to access alternate glyphs? To access alternate glyphs in Adobe InDesign or Illustrator, choose Window Type & Tables Glyphs In Photoshop, choose Window Glyphs. In the panel that opens, click the Show menu and choose Alternates for Selection. Double-click an alternate's thumbnail to swap them out. UPDATES : COMING SOON Mock ups and backgrounds used are not included. Thank you! Enjoy!

Migae is a versatile and elegant display font designed to captivate and engage audiences across a wide range of design applications. With 14 distinct weight variants spanning from delicate Light to commanding Black, and complemented by a refined set of italics, Migae offers a harmonious balance of strength and elegance to fulfill your typographic needs. Key Features: 1. 14 Weight Variants: Migae's extensive weight range, including Light, Regular, Medium, Semi-Bold, Bold, Extra Bold, and Black variants, allows you to choose the perfect weight for your design, whether it's a subtle headline or a bold statement. 2. Italics: In addition to its standard upright styles, Migae boasts a comprehensive set of italics that adds versatility to your typography, conveying an air of sophistication and style. 3. Strong to Elegant Styles: Migae's design philosophy seamlessly combines strength and elegance. Its strong weights provide a bold and impactful presence, while the lighter weights exude an effortless elegance, making it suitable for a wide array of creative projects. 4. Modern Aesthetic: Migae's clean, contemporary lines and carefully crafted details make it an ideal choice for modern graphic and web design, editorial layouts, branding, and advertising. 5. Legibility: Migae prioritizes legibility across all weights and styles, ensuring that your messages are communicated effectively, regardless of the chosen variant. 6. Versatile Applications: From branding and packaging to posters, editorial design, and web headings, Migae adapts to various design contexts, making it a versatile choice for graphic designers, typographers, and creative professionals. Design Inspiration: Migae draws inspiration from the harmony of nature, where strength and elegance coexist. Its name, derived from the Korean word "미래" (miraee), meaning "future," reflects its forward-thinking design approach that is equally rooted in tradition and innovation. Ideal Usage: Migae is an ideal choice for those seeking a display font that can effortlessly transition between bold and delicate, exuding confidence and refinement in every style. It's perfect for branding, packaging, advertising, editorial layouts, and any design project where typography plays a pivotal role. Migae is more than just a font; it's a design companion that empowers creatives to achieve a perfect balance between strength and elegance in their visual communications. Explore the world of Migae and let your design projects shine with its captivating charm and versatility.

TT Backwards useful links: Specimen | Graphic presentation | Customization options About TT Backwards: TT Backwards is an experimental font project inspired by the USSR typography and fonts of the late 70s and early 80s. Shop signs, posters, and book design—this is where we drew the inspiration for our project. TT Backwards consists of two complementary font subfamilies, a Script and a Grotesque, each of them includes 5 typefaces in 5 different weights (Thin, Light, Regular, Bold, Black). TT Backwards Script is a noncontrast almost monolinear solid script inspired by shop signs, poster and book design of the USSR. TT Backwards Script features a large number of Latin and Cyrillic ligatures (more than 70 items), which allows to make the script versatile and sophisticated to the max. And thanks to the implementation of a huge number of context alternates, all lowercase letters are joined softly and without breaks, and they meet the uppercase letters beautifully and correctly. TT Backwards Script supports the following OpenType features: liga, case, ordn, frac, sups, sinf, numr, dnom, tnum, onum, pnum. TT Backwards Sans is a narrow grotesque, which takes us back to the book design of late 70s and early 80s with its ductile characters. It is created considering its use in the small text size. TT Backwards Sans has a number of pronounced peculiarities: high x-height, exaggerated extenders, and big visual compensators and ink traps. Apart from the basic visual solution, TT Backwards Sans contains two experimental stylistic sets, which markedly change the overall visual perception of the text. SS01 alters high-frequency symbols of the Cyrillic alphabet, and SS02 significantly changes the high-frequency symbols of the Latin alphabet. FOLLOW US: Instagram | Facebook | Website TT Backwards OpenType features: case, ordn, frac, sups, sinf, numr, dnom, tnum, pnum, liga, zero, salt, ss01, ss02. TT Backwards language support: Acehnese, Afar, Albanian, Alsatian, Aragonese, Arumanian, Asu, Aymara, Banjar, Basque, Belarusian (cyr), Bemba, Bena, Betawi, Bislama, Boholano, Bosnian (cyr), Bosnian (lat), Breton, Bulgarian (cyr), Cebuano, Chamorro, Chiga, Colognian, Cornish, Corsican, Cree, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Embu, English, Erzya, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Friulian, Gaelic, Gagauz (lat), Galician, German, Gusii, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiri Motu, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Innu-aimun, Interlingua, Irish, Italian, Javanese, Judaeo-Spanish, Judaeo-Spanish, Kalenjin, Karachay-Balkar (lat), Karaim (lat), Karakalpak (lat), Kashubian, Khasi, Khvarshi, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kongo, Kumyk, Kurdish (lat), Ladin, Latvian, Laz, Leonese, Lithuanian, Luganda, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Macedonian, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malay, Manx, Maori, Mauritian Creole, Minangkabau, Moldavian (lat), Montenegrin (lat), Mordvin-moksha, Morisyen, Nahuatl, Nauruan, Ndebele, Nias, Nogai, Norwegian, Nyankole, Occitan, Oromo, Palauan, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rheto-Romance, Rohingya, Romanian, Romansh, Rombo, Rundi, Russian, Rusyn, Rwa, Salar, Samburu, Samoan, Sango, Sangu, Scots, Sena, Serbian (cyr), Serbian (lat), Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Shona, Slovak, Slovenian, Soga, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Swiss German, Swiss German, Tagalog, Tahitian, Taita, Tatar, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Tsonga, Tswana, Turkish, Turkmen (lat), Ukrainian, Uyghur, Vepsian, Volapük, Võro, Vunjo, Xhosa, Zaza, Zulu.

A friend of mine says that sports are the ultimate popular drug. One of his favorite things to say is, “The sun’s always shining on a game somewhere.” It’s hard to argue with that. But that perspective is now the privilege of a society where technology is so high and mighty that it all but shapes such perspectives. These days I can, if I so choose, subscribe to nothing but sports on over a hundred TV channels and a thousand browser bookmarks. But it wasn't always like that. When I was growing up, long before the super-commercialization of the sport, I and other kids spent more than every spare minute of our time memorizing the names and positions of players, collecting team shirts and paraphernalia, making up game scenarios, and just being our generation’s entirely devoted fans. Argentina is one of the nations most obsessed with sports, especially "fútbol" (or soccer to North Americans). The running American joke was that we're all born with a football. When the national team is playing a game, stores actually close their doors, and Buenos Aires looks like a ghost town. Even on the local level, River Plate, my favorite team where I grew up, didn't normally have to worry about empty seats in its home stadium, even though attendance is charged at a high premium. There are things our senses absorb when we are children, yet we don't notice them until much later on in life. A sport’s collage of aesthetics is one of those things. When I was a kid I loved the teams and players that I loved, but I never really stopped to think what solidified them in my memory and made them instantly recognizable to me. Now, thirty-some years later, and after having had the fortune to experience many cultures other than my own, I can safely deduce that a sport’s aesthetic depends on the local or national culture as much as it depends on the sport itself. And the way all that gets molded in a single team’s identity becomes so intricate it is difficult to see where each part comes from to shape the whole. Although “futbol” is still in my blood as an Argentinean, I'm old enough to afford a little cynicism about how extremely corporate most popular sports are. Of course, nothing can now take away the joy I got from football in my childhood and early teens. But over the past few years I've been trying to perceive the sport itself in a global context, even alongside other popular sports in different areas of the world. Being a type designer, I naturally focus in my comparisons on the alphabets used in designing different sports experiences. And from that I've come to a few conclusions about my own taste in sports aesthetic, some of which surprised me. I think I like the baseball and basketball aesthetic better than football, hockey, volleyball, tennis, golf, cricket, rugby, and other sports. This of course is a biased opinion. I'm a lettering guy, and hand lettering is seen much more in baseball and basketball. But there’s a bit more to it than that. Even though all sports can be reduced to a bare-bones series of purposes and goals to reach, the rules and arrangements of baseball and basketball, in spite of their obvious tempo differences, are more suited for overall artistic motion than other sports. So when an application of swashed handlettering is used as part of a team’s identity in baseball or basketball, it becomes a natural fit. The swashes can almost be visual representation of a basketball curving in the air on its way to the hoop, or a baseball on its way out of the park. This expression is invariably backed by and connected to bold, sleak lettering, representing the driving force and precision (arms, bat) behind the artistic motion. It’s a simple and natural connective analysis to a designer, but the normal naked eye still marvels inexplicably at the beauty of such logos and wordmarks. That analytical simplicity was the divining rod behind Fan Script. My own ambitious brief was to build a readable yet very artistic sports script that can be a perfect fit for baseball or basketball identities, but which can also be implemented for other sports. The result turned out to be quite beautiful to my eyes, and I hope you find it satisfactory in your own work. Sports scripts like this one are rooted in showcard lettering models from the late 19th and early 20th century, like Detroit’s lettering teacher C. Strong’s — the same models that continue to influence book designers and sign painters for more than a century now. So as you can see, American turn-of-the-century calligraphy and its long-term influences still remain a subject of fascination to me. This fascination has been the engine of most of my work, and it shows clearly in Fan Script. Fan Script is a lively heavy brush face suitable for sports identities. It includes a variety of swashes of different shapes, both connective and non-connective, and contains a whole range of letter alternates. Users of this font will find a lot of casual freedom in playing with different combinations - a freedom backed by a solid technological undercurrent, where OpenType features provide immediate and logical solutions to problems common to this kind of script. One final thing bears mentioning: After the font design and production were completed, it was surprisingly delightful for me to notice, in the testing stage, that my background as a packaging designer seems to have left a mark on the way the font works overall. The modern improvements I applied to the letter forms have managed to induce a somewhat retro packaging appearance to the totality of the typeface. So I expect Fan Script will be just as useful in packaging as it would be in sports identity, logotype and merchandizing. Ale Paul