A very expanded sans serif font in capital letters inspired by the inscription on a bank note Old bank notes tend to have a very typical typography. Usually they carry decorative and elaborately designed markings. For one thing, they must be practically impossible to forge and for another, they should make a respectable and legitimate impression. And in the days of copper and steel engravings, that meant nothing less than creating ornate, shaded or otherwise complicated scripts. Designing the appropriate script was literally in the hands of the engraver. That’s why I noticed this bank note from 1948. It is the first 20 mark bill in the then newly created currency ”Deutsche Mark.“ All other bank notes of the 1948 series show daintier forms of typography with an obvious tendency toward modern face. The 1949 series which followed shortly thereafter reveals the more complicated script as well. For whatever reason, only this 20 mark bill displays this extremely expanded sans serif variation of the otherwise Roman form applied. This peculiarity led me in the year 2010 to create a complete font from the single word ”Banknote.“ Back to those days in the 40’s, the initial edition of DM bank notes was carried out by a special US-American printer who was under pressure of completing on time and whose engravers not only engraved but also designed. So that’s why the bank notes resemble dollars and don’t even look like European currency. That also explains some of the uniquely designed characters when looked at in detail. Especially the almost serif type form on the letters C, G, S and Z, but also L and T owe their look to the ”American touch.“ The ingoFont Banknote 1948 comprises all characters of the Latin typeface according to ISO 8859 for all European languages including Turkish and Baltic languages. In order to maintain the character of the original, the ”creation“ of lower case letters was waived. This factor doesn’t contribute to legibility, but this kind of type is not intended for long texts anyway; rather, it unfolds its entire attraction when used as a display font, for example on posters. Banknote 1948 is also very suitable for distortion and other alien techniques, without too much harm being done to the characteristic forms. With Banknote 1948 ingoFonts discloses a font like scripts which were used in advertising of the 1940’s and 50’s and were popular around the world. But even today the use of this kind of font can be expedient, especially considering how Banknote 1948, for its time of origin, impresses with amazingly modern detail.

Milan-based Leftloft studio developed LFT Iro Sans, an expansive family that solves the significant, wide-ranging challenges of branding, wayfinding, pictographic language, and complex editorial use. LFT Iro Sans began as the clear and welcoming wayfinding project of San Siro stadium in Milan. Over time many other styles and weights have been added. LFT Iro Sans never finds itself outmatched by the task at hand. The primary aim was to design a technical typeface that was readable in any low visibility condition, for instance in a poorly lit area with awkward wall shapes and overhangs. This worked well for stadium and large lettering use, but other problems also needed to be addressed, such as complementary iconography. A location developer was left mixing — clashing, really — one type family with a different family of icons, resulting in a cobbled-together look which diluted the brand and the experience. They set out to radically simplify and clarify each shape and its meaning, accepting uniqueness as part of the final visual language. LFT Iro Sans pictograms answers the need for having a consistent and large group of icons, perfectly suited to the text typeface. As it concerns public spaces, this didn’t exist before. LFT Iro Sans incorporated a branding project too, so they decided to let LFT Iro Sans go out on a limb and created a unicase style that demands attention. Each unicase letter is a combination of the lowercase and capital form, quite noticeable in the ‘i’, ‘m’, ‘t’, and unique ‘d’ and ‘b’, balanced by more restrained forms of ‘a’, ‘s’, ‘c’, and ‘e’. LFT Iro Sans is not only a technical typeface, but, thanks to letters’ proportions, can also be used for editorial purposes. Assertive and economical in stature, the text weights are clear and assured. And a display version for headlines in Ultralight and Heavy (with italics) was developed for stunning headlines. For enthusiasts of every stripe, LFT Iro Sans can be a brand’s rallying cry with its arresting unicase, be a developer’s go-to pictogram choice, or set the most demanding editorial text in digital or print. With its many OpenType features, simplified pictogram commands (even available in Apple’s Pages and Microsoft Word), and a total of 30 targeted family members, LFT Iro Sans is a brilliant, easy choice. As with the rest of the TypeTogether catalogue, the complete LFT Iro Sans family, designed by Lefloft and developed by Octavio Pardo, has been optimised for today’s varied screen uses.

Keep Calm is a family of fonts developed from the now famous World War 2 poster that was designed in 1939 but never issued, then rediscovered in 2000. As well as the original Keep Calm font, the medium weight of the poster, new weights are now available – Keep Calm Book (regular weight), Heavy and Light – and each weight comes with a complimentary italic. Version 2.0 (2017) is a comprehensive update which consists of numerous refinements and improvements across all weights. The family now contains a full complement of Latin Extended-A characters, Welsh diacritics and Irish dotted consonants. The four italics have been optically corrected with revised, ‘true italic’ forms of a and f. The crown motif from the top of the Keep Calm poster is located at the plus minus ± and section § keystrokes (Alt 0177 and Alt 0167 on Windows). The lowercase g follows the Gill/Johnston eyeglass model, but also included is an alternative, single-story g at the Alt G keystroke (Alt 0169 on a Windows keyboard), the normal location of the copyright symbol which has been relocated elsewhere in the fonts. An alternative lowercase t, without the curved wedge cutaway, is provided at the Alt T (dagger) keystroke (Alt 0134 on Windows). When I first saw the Keep Calm and Carry On poster, I wrongly assumed the letters to be Gill Sans. Recent research at the National Archive by Dr. Bex Lewis of Manchester Metropolitan University has revealed that the original poster was hand drawn by the illustrator and painter, Ernest Wallcousins. The Gill Sans influence is apparent, in the R particularly, the M’s perfectly pointed vertex is redolent of Johnston’s Underground, and the most anomalous character, the C, resembles the ‘basic lettering’ of engineers that provided the vernacular sources for the Gotham typeface. Developing the Keep Calm typeface has been an exercise in extrapolation; an intriguing challenge to build a whole, high quality font family based on the twelve available capitals of the Keep Calm poster, and on similar lettering from the other two posters in the original series. This has required the creation of new lowercase letters that are believably 1939; that maintain the influence of Gill and Johnston while also hinting at the functional imperative of a wartime drawing office. Wallcousins’s lettering balanced intuitive human qualities and the pure pleasure of drawing elegant contemporary characters, against an underlying geometry of ruled lines, perfect circles, 45° terminals, and a requirement for no-nonsense clarity.

Introducing Monofonto—a meticulously crafted, technical typeface with a distinct, monospaced sans-serif design. Initially launched in 1999, Monofonto rapidly gained popularity throughout the 2000s and has since become a favorite choice of designers and developers alike. Built for clarity and precision, Monofonto is a compact sans-serif typeface, making it perfect for situations where space is limited. Its heavy strokes provide exceptional legibility even at small sizes, which is ideal for technical and scientific writing. Whether you’re working on a research paper, technical documentation, or programming code, Monofonto has got you covered. But that’s not all; Monofonto’s mathematical characters, currency symbols, and terminal block-draw characters make it the go-to typeface for all your scientific writing needs. Its vast collection of characters ensures that you have everything you need to create accurate and detailed technical documents. Monofonto comes in three styles: Regular, Italic, and Bold-Italic, giving you the flexibility to create different looks and styles for your technical documents. Its unique design and attention to detail make it an excellent choice for designers who want to showcase scientific accuracy and precision in their work. So, if you’re looking for a technical typeface that can help you create precise and accurate scientific documents, look no further than Monofonto. Its clarity, precision, and mathematical characters make it the perfect choice for any project. Try it today and experience the beauty of scientific design in your work. Most Latin-based European, Vietnamese, Greek, and most Cyrillic-based writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aromanian, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Bashkir, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bosnian, Breton, Bulgarian, Buryat, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dungan, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Gikuyu, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hungarian, Icelandic, Igbo, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kaingang, Khalkha, Kalmyk, Kanuri, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Kashubian, Kazakh, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Komi-Permyak, Kurdish, Kurdish (Latin), Kyrgyz, Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Macedonian, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Moldovan, Montenegrin, Nahuatl, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Ossetian, Ossetian (Latin), Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Russian, Rusyn, Sami, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian, Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tajik, Tatar, Tetum, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Ukrainian, Uzbek, Uzbek (Latin), Venda, Venetian, Vepsian, Vietnamese, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wolof, Xavante, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec, Zarma, Zazaki, Zulu and Zuni.