The building of the Northern Bank of St. Petersburg's Baku branch was built in 1903-1905. It was the first Art Nouveau-style building in Baku, Azerbaijan. Later the bank was transformed into the Russian-Asian Bank. After the oil boom in Baku in the 19th century, branches of many banks and new banks were opened in the city. The branch of the Northern Bank of St. Petersburg was among the first banks that was opened in Baku. N.Bayev was the architect of the building for the branch of the Northern Bank of St. Petersburg located at Gorchakovskaya 3 in 1903-1905. The building currently houses the Central Branch of the International Bank of Azerbaijan. My purpose in writing this is not to copy and paste the information from Wikipedia. What attracted me to the building was the word "Банкъ" (Bank) written in Cyrillic letters, which was also used in Azerbaijan during the Soviet era. The exact date of the writing is not known. Every time I pass by this building, I always thought of creating a font of this writing someday. I had taken a photo of the building and saved it on my phone. I did a lot of research on the font and asked a lot of people. However, some did not provide information at all and some said they did not have any information. I was interested in the history of this font but I do not know if this font really existed or it was created by the architect out of nowhere. If there was such a history of this font, I wanted to recreate this font and make it available. If not, I had to create it from scratch in the same way, using only existing letters on the building. Finally, I made up my mind and decided to develop the font with all letters I have got. It was difficult to create a font based on the word, Банкъ. Because in the appearance of the letters, the midline of the letters on A, H, K was very distinct, both in the form of inclination and in more precise degrees. The serif part of the letters, the height of the upper and lower sides, differed from each other. I don't know whether it was done this way when the building was constructed or it happened over time. I prepared and kept the initial version of the font. I took a break for a while. I started digging on the story of the font again. Meanwhile, I was researching and got inspired by similar fonts. Unfortunately, my research on the font's history did not yield any results. I decided to continue finishing up the font. After developing the demo, I created the font by keeping certain parts of these differences in the letters. In addition, I had to consider the development of letters in the Cyrillic, as well as the Latin alphabet, over the past period. Thus, I began to look at the appearance of slab-serif or serif fonts of that time. In general, as I gain more experience in developing fonts, I try to focus on the precision of the design for each font. In recent years, I specifically paid attention to this matter. YouTube channel and articles by Alexandra K.'s of ParaType, as well as, information and samples from TypeType and Fontfabric studios on the Cyrillic alphabet were quite useful. I gathered data regarding the Latin alphabet from various credible sources. I do not know if I could accomplish what I aimed at but I know one thing that I could develop the font. Maybe someday I'll have to revise this font. For now, I share it with you. I created the font in 10 styles. 7 weight from Thin to Extra Black, an Outline, Shadow, and Art Nouveau. The Art Nouveau style was inspired by the texture in the background used for the text on the building. The texture I applied to capital letters adds beauty to the font. If you like the font feel free to use it or simply let me know if your current alphabet doesn't support this font.

Type Ultimate is an exquisite serif font that combines elegance and sophistication. It comes in regular and italic versions, each containing a stunning collection of 383 ligature glyphs and alternate glyphs, as well as 26 swashes for both regular and italic versions. With its extensive character set, Type Ultimate supports a wide range of languages, making it a versatile choice for various projects. This font is perfect for creating a memorable logo, establishing a strong brand identity, and making headlines that stand out. Its timeless and refined design also makes it an excellent choice for elegant wedding invitations and other formal occasions. Overall, Type Ultimate is a font that exudes beauty and refinement, adding a touch of sophistication to any project it's used in. 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 Uppercase - AB,AC,AD,AG,AK,AL,AM,AN,AP,AR,AS,AT,AV,AY,BE,BL,BO,BU,CE,CH,CK,CO,CT,DE,DI,DO,EA,ED, EE,EF,EI,EL,EM,EN,EP,ER,ES,ET,EV,EX,EY,FA,FE,FF,FI,FO,FR,FT,FU,GA,GE,GH,GO,GR,HA,HE,HI, HO,HT,KE,KI,KN,LA,LD,LE,LF,LI,LL,LO,MA,ME,MI,MM,MO,MP,MU,NA,NC,ND,NE,NG,NK,NO,NS,NT, NY,OA,OD,OK,OL,OM,ON,OO,OP,OR,OS,OT,OU,OW,PA,PE,PL,PO,PP,PR,RA,RD,RE,RI,RO,RR,RS,RT, RY,SA,SE,SH,SO,ST,SU,TA,TE,TH,TI,TL,TO,TR,TS,TT,TU,UG,UL,UN,UR,US,UT,VE,VI,WE,WH,WI,WO,YO, YS,MEN,WER,FRO,RON,ROM,THE,AND,ING,HER,HAT,HIS,THA,ERE,FOR,ENT,ION,TER,WAS,YOU,ITH, VER,ALL,THI,TIO,OUL,ULD,IGH,GHT,AVE,HAV,ICH,HIC,HIN,HEY,ATI,EVE,HING,WERE,FROM,THAT,THER, TION,OULD,IGHT,HAVE,THIS,THIN,THEY, ATIO,EVER,MENT Lowercase - ab,ad,ag,ai,ak,al,am,an,ap,as,at,av,ay,ba,be,bl,bo,bu,ca,ce,ch,ck,co,ct,de,di,do,ea,ec,ed,ee,ef,eg,ei,ej,el,en,ep,es,et,ev,ew,ey,fa,fe,fi,fo,fr,fu,ga,ge,gh,gi,gr,ha,he,hi,ho,ht,ic,id,ie,ik,il,im,in,io,ir,is,it,iv,ke,ki,kn,la,ld,le,lf,li,lo,ly,ma,me,mi,na,nc,nd,ne,ng,ni,nk,nl,no,nt,ny,oa,oc,od,of,oi,ok,ol,om,on,oo,op,ot,ou,ov, ow,pa,pe,pi,pl,po,pp,qu,ra,rd,re,ri,rm,rn,ro,rr,rs,rt,ru,ry,sa,se,sh,si,so,sp,ss,st,su,ta,te,th,ti,tl,to,ts,tt, tu,uc,ug,um,un,up,ur,us,ut,va,ve,wa,we,wo,xp,ye,yo,ys,men,wer,fro,rom,ron,the,and,ing,her,hat,tha, ere,for,ent,ion,ter,you,ver,thi,ght,ave,hey 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. Mock ups and backgrounds used are not included. Thank you! Enjoy!

TA Bankslab graphic presentation at Behance The building of the Northern Bank of St. Petersburg's Baku branch was built in 1903-1905. It was the first Art Nouveau-style building in Baku, Azerbaijan. Later the bank was transformed into the Russian-Asian Bank. After the oil boom in Baku in the 19th century, branches of many banks and new banks were opened in the city. The branch of the Northern Bank of St. Petersburg was among the first banks that was opened in Baku. N.Bayev was the architect of the building for the branch of the Northern Bank of St. Petersburg located at Gorchakovskaya 3 in 1903-1905. The building currently houses the Central Branch of the International Bank of Azerbaijan. My purpose in writing this is not to copy and paste the information from Wikipedia. What attracted me to the building was the word "Банкъ" (Bank) written in Cyrillic letters, which was also used in Azerbaijan during the Soviet era. The exact date of the writing is not known. Every time I pass by this building, I always thought of creating a font of this writing someday. I had taken a photo of the building and saved it on my phone. I did a lot of research on the font and asked a lot of people. However, some did not provide information at all and some said they did not have any information. I was interested in the history of this font but I do not know if this font really existed or it was created by the architect out of nowhere. If there was such a history of this font, I wanted to recreate this font and make it available. If not, I had to create it from scratch in the same way, using only existing letters on the building. Finally, I made up my mind and decided to develop the font with all letters I have got. It was difficult to create a font based on the word, Банкъ. Because in the appearance of the letters, the midline of the letters on A, H, K was very distinct, both in the form of inclination and in more precise degrees. The serif part of the letters, the height of the upper and lower sides, differed from each other. I don't know whether it was done this way when the building was constructed or it happened over time. I prepared and kept the initial version of the font. I took a break for a while. I started digging on the story of the font again. Meanwhile, I was researching and got inspired by similar fonts. Unfortunately, my research on the font's history did not yield any results. I decided to continue finishing up the font. After developing the demo, I created the font by keeping certain parts of these differences in the letters. In addition, I had to consider the development of letters in the Cyrillic, as well as the Latin alphabet, over the past period. Thus, I began to look at the appearance of slab-serif or serif fonts of that time. In general, as I gain more experience in developing fonts, I try to focus on the precision of the design for each font. In recent years, I specifically paid attention to this matter. YouTube channel and articles by Alexandra K.'s of ParaType, as well as, information and samples from TypeType and Fontfabric studios on the Cyrillic alphabet were quite useful. I gathered data regarding the Latin alphabet from various credible sources. I do not know if I could accomplish what I aimed at but I know one thing that I could develop the font. Maybe someday I'll have to revise this font. For now, I share it with you. I created the font in 10 styles. 7 weight from Thin to Extra Black, an Outline, Shadow, and Art Nouveau. The Art Nouveau style was inspired by the texture in the background used for the text on the building. The texture I applied to capital letters adds beauty to the font. If you like the font feel free to use it or simply let me know if your current alphabet doesn't support this font.

After doing this for so many years, one would think my fascination with the old history of writing would have mellowed out by now. The truth is that alongside being a calligraphy history buff, I'm a pop technology freak. Maybe even keener on the tech thing, since I just can't seem to get enough new gadgets. And after working with type technologies for so many years, I'm starting to think that writing and design technologies as we now know them, being about 2.5 post-computer generations, keep becoming more and more detached from what the very old humanity arts/tasks they essentially want to facilitate. In a world where command-z is a frequently used key combination, it’s difficult to justify expecting a Morris-made book or a Zaner-drawn sentence, but accidental artistic “mutations” become welcome, marketable features. When fluid pens were introduced, their liquid saturation influenced type design to a great extent almost overnight an influence professional designers tend to play down. Now round stroke endings are a common sight, and the saturation is so clean and measured, unlike any liquid-paper relationship possible in reality. Some designers even illustrate their work by overlaying perfect circles at stroke ends, in order to illustrate how “geometric” their work was. Because if it’s measured with precise geometry, it’s got to be meaningful design. And once in a while, by a total freak accident, the now-cherished mutations prove to have existed long before the technology that caused them. Rolling Pen was cued by just such a thing: A rounded, circular, roll-flowing calligraphy from the late nineteenth century seemingly one of those experimental takes on what inspired Business Penmanship, another font of mine. Looking at it now it certainly seems to be friendlier, more legible, and maybe even more practical and easier to execute than the standard business penmanship of those days, but I guess friendliness and simplicity were at odds with the stiff manner business liked to present itself back then, so that kind of thing remained buried in the professional penman’s oddities drawer. It would be quite a few years before all this curviness and rounding were thought of as symbolic of graceful movement, which brought such a flow closer to the idea of fine art. Even though in this case the accidental mutation just happens to not be a mutation after all, the whole technology-transforms-application argument still applies here. I'm almost sure “business” will be the last thing on people’s minds when they use this font today. One extreme example of that level of disconnect between origin and current application is shown here, with the so-called business penmanship strutting around in gloss and neon. Rolling Pen is another cup of mine that runneth over with alternates, swashes, ligatures, and other techy perks. To explore its full potential, please use it in a program that supports OpenType features for advanced typography. Enjoy the new Rolling Pen designed by Ale Paul with Neon’s visual poetry by Tomás García.

TT Jenevers useful links: Specimen | Graphic presentation | Customization options Please note! If you need OTF versions of the fonts, just email us at commercial@typetype.org About TT Jenevers: TT Jenevers is a modern serif with Dutch flavor. The font family features the characteristic details peculiar to Dutch serifs—these are the asymmetrical shape of serifs and an irregular slant of ovals. For example, in the letter “o” there is no slant, but it is present in p-q. In TT Jenevers, both lowercase and uppercase characters are of a large size, which makes it a rather display typeface. At the same time, the big half-ellipse of the lowercase characters does not allow the letters to stick, which allows the implementation of TT Jenevers in text arrays. The italics of the TT Jenevers are slightly narrower as compared to upright faces—this is done to ensure a greater density of the text array. The italics of the TT Jenevers are slightly narrower as compared to upright faces—this is done to ensure a greater density of the text array. TT Jenevers font family consists of 12 fonts (6 upright and 6 true Italics), each of which has more than 830 characters. The typefaces include small capitals for Cyrillic and Latin alphabets, 33 ligatures, standard and old-style figures, stylistic alternates, arrows, hands, and card suits. We have prepared two dissimilar stylistic sets, which allow changing the nature of TT Jenevers to a more hand-written one, or adding a futuristic touch to the typeface. FOLLOW US: Instagram | Facebook | Website TT Jenevers OpenType features: ordn, case, c2sc, smcp, frac, sups, sinf, numr, dnom, onum, tnum, pnum, lnum, liga, dlig, salt, ss01, ss02, zero. TT Jenevers language support: Acehnese, Afar, Albanian, Alsatian, Aragonese, Arumanian, Asu, Aymara, Azerbaijani, Banjar, Basque, Belarusian (cyr), Belarusian (lat), Bemba, Bena, Betawi, Bislama, Boholano, Bosnian (cyr), Bosnian (lat), Breton, Bulgarian (cyr), Cebuano, Chamorro, Chichewa, Chiga, Colognian, Cornish, Corsican, Cree, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Embu, English, Erzya, Esperanto, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gaelic, Gagauz (lat), Galician, Ganda, German, Gusii, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiri Motu, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Innu-aimun, Interlingua, Irish, Italian, Javanese, Jola-Fonyi, Judaeo-Spanish, Judaeo-Spanish, Kalenjin, Karachay-Balkar (lat), Karaim (lat), Karakalpak (lat), Kashubian, Kazakh (lat), Khasi, Khvarshi, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Komi-Permyak, Komi-Zyrian, Kongo, Kumyk, Kurdish (lat), Ladin, Latvian, Laz, Leonese, Lithuanian, Luba-Kasai, Luganda, Luo, Luxembourgish, Luyia, Macedonian, Machame, Makhuwa-Meetto, Makonde, Malay, Maltese, 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, Sasak, Scots, Sena, Serbian (cyr), Serbian (lat), Seychellois Creole, Shambala, Shona, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Soga, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Sundanese, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Swiss German, Tagalog, Tahitian, Taita, Talysh (lat), Tatar, Teso, Tetum, Tok Pisin, Tongan, Tsakhur (Azerbaijan), Tsonga, Tswana, Turkish, Turkmen (lat), Udmurt, Ukrainian, Uyghur, Vastese, Vepsian, Volapük, Võro, Vunjo, Welsh, Wolof, Xhosa, Zaza, Zulu.

TT Lovelies Script useful links: Specimen | Graphic presentation | Customization options About TT Lovelies Script: Without any false modesty we can say that TT Lovelies Script is one of the most complicated projects we have ever carried out – there are 1115 glyphs, more than 2000 contextual alternates, 10000 kerned pairs and a large number of OT features, including ligatures and Old Style numbers. The most important characteristic of this font is that it is really seamless. We've done the impossible: in TT Lovelies Script, even capital letters are connected to lower-case letters without any breaks. The base for our typeface is original calligraphy by Russian designer Alena Korobanova. The beautiful handwriting was painstakingly crafted into a fully functional font. TT Lovelies Script is a very lively and playful typeface with some unpredictable nuances. Turn on the use of OpenType features CALT & DLIG in your graphic editor and use the font to the full. Every lower-case letter has characteristic pen strokes which begin and end a word. The pen strokes are turned on automatically when you accordingly type two hyphens at the beginning and at the end of a word. For instance, type '- - apricot - -' and you'll see the beautiful pen strokes at the beginning and at the end of the word. TT Lovelies Script uses a great number of contextual alternates and ligatures which help maintain the handwritten impression. For each letter, a separate grapheme is created for the end of a line, and we've also integrated the Case Sensitive OpenType feature to make working with upper-case characters easier. We've enabled onum, sups, sinf, numr, dnom, frac, ordn as well in order to work with figures. To benefit from all of these wonderful options, you need to use software which supports OpenType features. TT Lovelies Script 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, Montenegrin (lat), Mordvin-moksha, Morisyen, Nahuatl, Nauruan, Ndebele, Nias, Nogai, Norwegian, Nyankole, Occitan, Oromo, Palauan, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rheto-Romance, Rohingya, 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.

TT Barrels useful links: Specimen PDF | Graphic presentation | Customization options TT Barrels is an elegant scotch style modern serif with strong industrial accents in its design. The TT Barrels project was born from a fictional technical assignment in which we tried to combine the technological effectiveness of industrial production used in engineering and the restrictions imposed by it with a beautiful scotch style serif. We decided to create a typeface that could be used to press letters on the metal body of a car, all while the typeface being elegant, and possessing sophisticated details that are typical of the classic text fonts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the process of designing and sketching, we reconsidered certain aspects and abandoned some of the requirements imposed by the technology of metal letter pressing, for example, from the extensive application of visual compensators, the decreased strokes contrast, and the hyperdeformation of individual letter elements to preserve a more pronounced rhythm of these elements. First of all, we wanted both to maintain the ease of reading for the entire text array and follow the rules of aesthetics of each letter in the typeface, while still leaving some influence of industrialism. In the end, this influence is best manifested in serifs, which are quite massive and have a technologically exaggerated wedge shape. TT Barrels consists of 12 fonts: Light, Regular, DemiBold, Bold, Extrabold, Black and the corresponding Italics. Each outline consists of more than 750 glyphs and includes small capitals, ligatures (for Latin and Cyrillic alphabets), stylistic alternates, old-style figures, and many other useful features. FOLLOW US: Instagram | Facebook | Website TT Barrels OpenType features: ordn, c2sc, smcp, case, frac, sinf, sups, numr, dnom, tnum, onum, lnum, pnum, dlig, liga, calt, salt (ss01). TT Barrels 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.

The concept of the Baroque Roman type face is something which is remote from us. Ungrateful theorists gave Baroque type faces the ill-sounding attribute "Transitional", as if the Baroque Roman type face wilfully diverted from the tradition and at the same time did not manage to mature. This "transition" was originally meant as an intermediate stage between the Aldine/Garamond Roman face of the Renaissance, and its modern counterpart, as represented by Bodoni or Didot. Otherwise there was also a "transition" from a slanted axis of the shadow to a perpendicular one. What a petty detail led to the pejorative designation of Baroque type faces! If a bookseller were to tell his customers that they are about to choose a book which is set in some sort of transitional type face, he would probably go bust. After all, a reader, for his money, would not put up with some typographical experimentation. He wants to read a book without losing his eyesight while doing so. Nevertheless, it was Baroque typography which gave the world the most legible type faces. In those days the craft of punch-cutting was gradually separating itself from that of book-printing, but also from publishing and bookselling. Previously all these activities could be performed by a single person. The punch-cutter, who at that time was already fully occupied with the production of letters, achieved better results than he would have achieved if his creative talents were to be diffused in a printing office or a bookseller's shop. Thus it was possible that for example the printer John Baskerville did not cut a single letter in his entire lifetime, for he used the services of the accomplished punch-cutter John Handy. It became the custom that one type founder supplied type to multiple printing offices, so that the same type faces appeared in various parts of the world. The type face was losing its national character. In the Renaissance period it is still quite easy to distinguish for example a French Roman type face from a Venetian one; in the Baroque period this could be achieved only with great difficulties. Imagination and variety of shapes, which so far have been reserved only to the fine arts, now come into play. Thanks to technological progress, book printers are now able to reproduce hairstrokes and imitate calligraphic type faces. Scripts and elaborate ornaments are no longer the privilege of copper-engravers. Also the appearance of the basic, body design is slowly undergoing a change. The Renaissance canonical stiffness is now replaced with colour and contrast. The page of the book is suddenly darker, its lay-out more varied and its lines more compact. For Baroque type designers made a simple, yet ingenious discovery - they enlarged the x-height and reduced the ascenders to the cap-height. The type face thus became seemingly larger, and hence more legible, but at the same time more economical in composition; the type area was increasing to the detriment of the margins. Paper was expensive, and the aim of all the publishers was, therefore, to sell as many ideas in as small a book block as possible. A narrowed, bold majuscule, designed for use on the title page, appeared for the first time in the Late Baroque period. Also the title page was laid out with the highest possible economy. It comprised as a rule the brief contents of the book and the address of the bookseller, i.e. roughly that which is now placed on the flaps and in the imprint lines. Bold upper-case letters in the first line dramatically give way to the more subtle italics, the third line is highlighted with vermilion; a few words set in lower-case letters are scattered in-between, and then vermilion appears again. Somewhere in the middle there is an ornament, a monogram or an engraving as a kind of climax of the drama, while at the foot of the title-page all this din is quietened by a line with the name of the printer and the year expressed in Roman numerals, set in 8-point body size. Every Baroque title-page could well pass muster as a striking poster. The pride of every book printer was the publication of a type specimen book - a typographical manual. Among these manuals the one published by Fournier stands out - also as regards the selection of the texts for the specimen type matter. It reveals the scope of knowledge and education of the master typographers of that period. The same Fournier established a system of typographical measurement which, revised by Didot, is still used today. Baskerville introduced the smoothing of paper by a hot steel roller, in order that he could print astonishingly sharp letters, etc. ... In other words - Baroque typography deserves anything else but the attribute "transitional". In the first half of the 18th century, besides persons whose names are prominent and well-known up to the present, as was Caslon, there were many type founders who did not manage to publish their manuals or forgot to become famous in some other way. They often imitated the type faces of their more experienced contemporaries, but many of them arrived at a quite strange, even weird originality, which ran completely outside the mainstream of typographical art. The prints from which we have drawn inspiration for these six digital designs come from Paris, Vienna and Prague, from the period around 1750. The transcription of letters in their intact form is our firm principle. Does it mean, therefore, that the task of the digital restorer is to copy meticulously the outline of the letter with all inadequacies of the particular imprint? No. The type face should not to evoke the rustic atmosphere of letterpress after printing, but to analyze the appearance of the punches before they are imprinted. It is also necessary to take account of the size of the type face and to avoid excessive enlargement or reduction. Let us keep in mind that every size requires its own design. The longer we work on the computer where a change in size is child's play, the more we are convinced that the appearance of a letter is tied to its proportions, and therefore, to a fixed size. We are also aware of the fact that the computer is a straightjacket of the type face and that the dictate of mathematical vectors effectively kills any hint of naturalness. That is why we strive to preserve in these six alphabets the numerous anomalies to which later no type designer ever returned due to their obvious eccentricity. Please accept this PostScript study as an attempt (possibly futile, possibly inspirational) to brush up the warm magic of Baroque prints. Hopefully it will give pleasure in today's modern type designer's nihilism.