»Cristal True« is an elaborate matrix display font. It contains 645 letters per font style and some Open Type features: Different stylistic alternates, small caps, various font styles and different sets of numerals. It is monospaced and therefor easy to handle, if you want to simulate the look and feel of a LCD display. The basis of this font is a Union-Jack or sixteen-segment display (SISD). It is expanded by another 10 segments for a wider range of languages supported (this should cover all European regions). »Crystal True« is perfected for the quick, easy and precise use in modern graphic design applications. Try »Cristal Text« for more text-heavier usages.

In 1916 the Prang company - still famous for their excellent pens and pencils - commissioned Thomas Woods Stevens to hire the best calligraphers of the era to hand letter sample pages with different Prang pens and in a variety of styles. The resulting book is a font maker's dream, a collection of period lettering samples perfect for making new fonts. One of the sample pages shows off the look of the Spoonbill pen with a set of classic art deco style letters by Charles Earley. This sample is the basis for our Spoonbill font, which includes a full character set, plus character variations for nesting and overlapping, and a small selection of decorative border characters in the art deco style.

By day, Ken Gitschier is one of Monotype Imaging's in-house type designers, busy creating fonts for on-screen typography - a demanding undertaking that requires meticulously editing fonts on a pixel-by-pixel basis. His tools are Fontographer software, a Wacom digital tablet, a high-resolution monitor and a keen understanding of typographic forms. But by night, Gitschier uses the same tools to indulge his passion for experimental typeface designs. GitchHand is one of Gitschier's nocturnal projects. The design has an almost painterly quality. Depth, texture and even a sense of color are found in the lettershapes. Edgy, iconoclastic, and not for the typographically faint of heart, GitchHand makes a strong visual statement.

A 1930s WPA (Works Projects Administration) poster advertising a play entitled “Abraham Lincoln, The Great Commoner” had the play’s name done in a hand-lettered Art Deco sans. This is the basis for Art Project JNL. According to Wikipedia, “the Works Progress Administration (renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration; WPA) was the largest and most ambitious American New Deal agency, employing millions of unemployed people (mostly unskilled men) to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads. In a much smaller but more famous project, Federal Project Number One, the WPA employed musicians, artists, writers, actors and directors in large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects.”

MVB Solano Gothic Bold was originally designed as a display face for the City of Albany, California (located on the San Francisco Bay facing the Golden Gate Bridge and bordering Berkeley). Named for the City’s main street, the typeface needed to work on signage in proximity to early 20th Century buildings, and in contemporary settings. Rather than creating a neutered design to cover all bases, Mark van Bronkhorst chose to develop a simple, strong, condensed face that would offer flexibility of style by providing both retro and more contemporary forms. Solano Gothic has since been expanded to a family offering five weights from Light to Bold. The basic fonts provide upper- and lowercase forms, with figures designed to harmonize within upper- and lowercase settings (the standard figures are not full cap height). The same figures are provided with Small Caps, and align to small cap height. For all-cap settings requiring figures and monetary symbols of full-cap height, there are the “Cap” fonts. An alternate tabular “1” is provided in all fonts so that both fitted and tabular settings of figures are possible (access to alternate characters subject to system or application support).

Zeitung is a sans serif family which works equally well on print and web. First of all: Zeitung is a sans serif made according to contemporary standards: 8 weights, romans and italics, all equipped with small caps. Lots of OpenType features, like uppercase punctuation or 5 figure styles to make sure any of your mathematical or financial charts, tables and diagrams look cool. Zeitung’s typographic palette focuses on utility and legibility, but in the farthest corners you’ll discover a rich array of flavours: punchy black weights, fashionable thin styles, carefully hand crafted true italics, distinct small caps. But Zeitung has more to offer. Its optical sizes offer the best style for each size of your text. Zeitung fonts are devided to two optical families: Zeitung Standard and Zeitung Micro. Zeitung Standard works great in most sizes, while Zeitung Micro fonts are specially made for very small sizes in print and web. Zeitung Micro fonts are perfectly legible in web, where the same technical font styles have to survive in many environments, from older browsers to most up to date mobile screens. Next to that: the lightest weights also function as grades, because they share the same metrics. This can be very handy for selecting the optimal weight for your specific situation, especially on screens or when type is printed by a newspaper press. Letters are rendered in many various ways on different screens. Maybe the interface of your next app requires a different grade than your latest website? Zeitung allows you to change the weight of your text without any further consequence for the design. That is a welcome relief during the design process. Zeitung will help to bring your message across in many different circumstances, from large text in print to small type on screens.

This font set is based on the handwriting styles of quintessential American artist Edward Hopper and his wife, Josephine Nivison Hopper, and was produced in conjunction with the Whitney Museum of American Art. Both artists kept a record of Edward's paintings in a series of journals, which provide the basis for this set. Unlike font sets which feature two similar handwriting samples of one artist, the Edward Hopper font set presents two distinct handwriting styles. The Edward Hopper font is typically masculine, with its sharp angularity, while the Josephine Hopper font presents an interesting contrast, given its elegant, rounded shape, with significantly more flourish. The extras, culled from the aforementioned journals, feature 52 Hopper sketches, which run the gamut from landscapes to nude studies.

Since the beginning, “Histories” has been inspired by the shape of the letters displayed on the cover of fairy tale books or animated film covers. Likewise with the naming of the font "Histories" so that the message of the letters is conveyed. And this stylistic combination should also be reflected in the lowercase set which also allows to open up a spectrum of possible uses. Basic calligraphy represents a solid basis for the development of lowercase glyphs, ensuring proper interaction with uppercase letters. “Histories” features multiple ligatures that combine the playerful structure with a more attractive feel. With glyphs, it provides a wide range of uses across ligature combinations, alternate marks, pre-caps, assortments and connectors; each of which can be accessed via Open Type.

A hand lettered emulation of a Roman stencil type face on the cover of the folio for the Stenso School Set was the basis for Eutaw Stencil JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions. The Stenso School Set (circa 1940-41) was comprised of three stencils – two lettering guides and a map of the [then] 48 United States. Developed and patented by Baltimore school teacher Ruth Libauer Hormats, her stencils were the first to offer a system for accurate letter spacing and ease of use. “Eutaw” (as part of the font’s name) is taken from Eutaw Place, the street where Ruth and her husband lived at the time of Stenso’s inception. To the Cherokee, the name means “Creek Indian”.

Tabac Slab was created by combining several contradictory influences, the result of which is a universal linear font. The combination of brisk serifs and refined calligraphic details in the structure of the characters serves to create an original concept that mixes influences from both book and advertising graphics. Serifs aid legibility in long texts, while small drawn details realise their full potential in sizes of twenty-four points and larger. The basis for our Egyptienne was Tabac Sans, with which Slab logically forms a harmonic duo. The addition of bracket-less serifs caused the typeface to thicken and become solidly anchored on the lines, giving a firm answer to all typographers who like to complain about the slight exuberance of grotesque fonts.

Frederic Goudy drew Truesdell in 1930 and first used it for an article in a quarterly journal for book collectors. Since it was a small family and not promoted, Goudy received few orders for fonts. The original drawings and matrices for the face were lost in the fire that destroyed Goudy's studio in 1939.The only known examples of Truesdell fonts reside in the extensive collection of typographic material at the Rochester Institute of Technology School of Printing. It was proofs from these fonts that served as the basis for Monotype's digital revival of the family. Monotype Truesdell was released in March of 1994, just slightly over fifty-five years after fire destroyed Goudy's original work. Truesdell font field guide including best practices, font pairings and alternatives.

The Narsinh Series (from the 1940 Gujarati Type Foundry of Bombay, India) is a modular metal font comprised of 32 basic shape pieces which would be assembled into any configuration to form various letters and numbers. Examples of the alphabet and numerals were set in an Art Deco, condensed sans serif and were the basis for this type revival. Strongly resembling a stencil design, the typeface was named after the revered 15th-century poet-saint of Gujarat, India Narsinh Mehta, and the foundry itself gets its name from the language and script of Gujarati [spoken by the Indo-Aryan residents of the Indian state of Gujarat]. Divided Highway JNL is the digital version of this design, and is available in both regular and oblique versions.

The digital outline fonts, DIN 1451 Fette Engschrift and Fette Mittelschrift were created by URW in 1984 and are the basis for all DIN font families. Both typefaces were designed for the URW SIGNUS system and were mainly used for the production of traffic signs. They have since become so popular in other areas that we have developed a complete DIN font family with 48 styles in OpenType Pro: URW DIN. It is semi-condensed, which is unique among the DIN fonts, so it has a broad spectrum of typographic uses. Its large x-height makes it perfect for use in e-publishing (web, apps, e-Books etc) and its adjusted stroke width between the regular and bold weights enhances its quality and distinguishability in print.

Bourne is a comprehensive text and display sans-serif family consisting of 21 typefaces, all with a range of features including stylistic alternates, discretionary ligatures, as well as old-style and tabular numeral forms and fractions. The 21 typefaces include two widths and three weights of type as well as square and round terminal forms and oblique faces. Three specialised display faces are also included. The face is ideal for establishing a consistent 'look' across a range of projects and could readily become the basis of an organisation's house publication style. Bourne works well in poster and large scale design work, as well as for the setting of large amounts of text. Individual faces are priced economically and substantial discounts are offered for packs of multiple typefaces.

Gardner Sans is a humanist sans serif with a range of weights, italics, small caps stylistics alternates and a set of decorative ornaments. The light and regular faces work at smaller sizes and the heavier weights are good for display lettering. It is inspired by a few historical sources including Stephenson Blakes' Granby, Gill Sans, as well as some old hand-done lettering for sales tickets. The name (and the basis for the small caps) derives in-particular from the Roy Gardner collection of sales tickets from early 20th century that can be found on spitalfieldslife.com The heavier weights were particularly influenced by a later cut of Gill Sans, Extra Bold 321. The italic is more of a contemporary mix of humanist styles.

Roundhand was created by Matthew Carter in 1966 on the basis of handwriting by Charles Snell, an English calligrapher of XVII-XVIII known in particular by his "The Pen-man's Treasury Open'd" written in 1694. The typeface has continuous cursive shapes with oval aspect, high contrast emphasized by abrupt transitions from thin to thick and regularity of slope. Its capitals are often used as initials in combinations with other typefaces. The current digital version of the typeface has 3 styles of different weights. Roundhand is clear and easy to read and is well-suited for medium size texts and headlines. It will work well in invitations, menus, packaging, and advertising accentuating elegance and the subtle nature of the content. The Cyrillic version was developed by Vladimir Yefimov and Isabella Chaeva. Released by ParaType in 2013.

Jan Koller designed the Banner typeface family especially for the creation of animated web banners. Banner is best used at 80p without antialiasing. The family comes in 24 styles which, in combination, create great, unusual screen effects. Three different animation modells provide the basis: extrusion, cutting in/out by ‘pixelation’, outline pixel rotation. The available flash clip listed in the Related Links below demonstrates some of the effects. Take a look! The swf clip runs in any web browser (drag & drop) but you need the flash player plugin. Apart from animation use, Banner also works well in print. Since all 24 styles are identical in width and kerning, you can set several styles on top of each other, maybe using different colours for each style. Look at the nice effects yourself!

As with Nocturne, Dusk til Dawn recalls the romantic, sophisticated Zeitgeist of the early 20th century, that nostalgic time "between the wars". It as a number of attractive ligatures and upper-case alternates. I have used Nocturne as a basis for Dusk til Dawn, given the font really bold down-strokes, reduced the width of some upper case characters and changed the shape of many lower case characters. Dusk til Dawn comes in two styles: Dusk til Dawn Regular, which uses the Art Deco convention of small x height, and long ascenders. This Display style is perfect for headers, posters, labels etc. Dusk til Dawn Book, which, with its higher x-height and slightly wider characters, is extremely legible and suitable for longer passages of smaller size text.

The basis for Series A Signage JNL is Highway Gothic; a type style design formally known as the FHWA Series. The font was developed by the United States Federal Highway Administration, and originally consisted of only capital letters and figures. Each Letter designation represented a character width from "A" (condensed) to "F" (wide). Due to poor visibility at high speeds, Series "A" was discontinued. At one point lower case characters were added to the various widths of the design, but this typeface revival is based on the original guidelines specified in the 1948 (reprinted 1952) book "Standard Alphabets for Highway Signs" [this was the original name for the FHWA series fonts preceding the eventual name change to Highway Gothic]. Unlike the original, Series A Signage JNL is available in both regular and oblique versions.

Sharik Sans (named after the brave and smart dog-hero from my favorite TV series) has a warm and gentle personality. It does not shout; it does not stand out. Sharik serves his master in everyday work. Although it is a sans serif, you can feel a calligrapher’s touch in its subtle details and endings. They shine out, especially at display sizes. The family consists of nine weights plus matching italics. It meets most of the needs designers deal with on a daily basis, including web usage. It is stuffed up with various OpenType features such as small capitals, a wide set of numerals, fractions, ordinals, alternates, and, of course, ligatures. And it perfectly harmonises with my other serif-like typeface family Clavo. NB: This font is NOT style linked by weight!

Haven font family is based on the compositionality of constructive elements that create the final shape of individual letters. Mechanical connecting was continuously adjusted by a type designer’s feeling. In this way Haven differs from similar typefaces of the 1960s and 1990s. Six fonts of different stroke intensity create a rich family of typefaces for a variety of uses in typography for special occasions. Although the typeface was drawn for headings, it is suitable for typesetting of long texts in a book. Even in extreme reduction it retains its technical basis, negating classic book alphabets, and it adds an experimental look to the text. Both extreme fonts Thin and Black create strong contrast and their magnification brings attention to their interconnection of all details. Serif version Haven Serif is also being prepared.

Natalya Swashes provides a diverse set of flowing swashes and ornaments originally designed to complement the popular insigne script Natalya. The basis point for Natalya's ornate swirls is the golden ratio, and this makes for especially harmonious swashes with timeless appeal. These poised and graceful flourishes can be easily adapted to many design situations, even in situations that don't call for Natalya Swashes' script companion. Natalya swashes can be resized and rotated easily without any loss of quality and converted to outlines and modified. Combine them to form unique compositions or insert them into your copy to create interest. Please see the sample .pdf to see all 56 ornaments in action. The Natalya Swash package comes with an inDesign sample file to quickly reference ornaments and copy and paste them into your layouts.

The rasterized square (clear, therefore 4 as part of the font name) was the constructive basis. The intention was to put all characters within this grid and produce a highly structured, yet lively, resting in itself, display font. Relaxed but exciting, just. An absolutely noteworthy detail are the classical construction principles (based on a typography book from the 50's for poster designers), the so-called optical weighting, derived and slightly exaggerated character elements: The characters are not purely symmetrical and the curve shapes do not close justified with the surrounding square. Loops and tongues slightly hang over; the upper bows are slightly less protruding than lower ones, etc. The kerning is tuned to fit these design details: the white space between the characters match the same filling space.

Signal1885 is the abbreviated name for "(Sig)nature Jour(nal)" a font that harkens back to an era, when fine handwriting filled journals with observations of science and adventure. Intimate and reflective of an individual entering his thoughts in his personal journal or a ship’s captain documenting his voyage on a daily basis. Signal1885 is penmanship that reflects hand forms from by-gone days. Its a minimal glyph set which can be used at various sizes as small as 18 points. It includes a selection of ink drips and smudges, that are the “mark” of a hand done entry. These can be placed in strategic places on the type to indicate a hand dragging through or dripping fresh ink on to the paper. Set sail- and keep a diary of your voyage.

While watching the 1947 holiday classic “Miracle on 34th Street”, one scene in particular presented a chance to develop a retro type design. ‘Kris Kringle’ suggests to a mother visiting with her child in the Macy’s toy department to try Gimbel’s for a toy she couldn’t find at the store. The news of this behavior reaches Mr. Macy himself, who embraces the practice as a brilliant marketing strategy. A number of departments are then presented with reference books containing competitor ads, and the visual of the cover stating “R.H. Macy & Co. Shopping Guide for the Convenience of Our Customers” shows on screen. The thin, Art Deco sans serif monoline with a few serif-like hooks added onto some characters became the basis for Shopping Guide JNL, which is available in both regular and oblique versions.

DESCRIPTION With Skill I wanted to create something wild. Something that splashed the letters with life. To do this, I knew I'd have to break the barrier between analog and digital, so I took my best brush and started to play. Throughout the years as a type-designer I've met and become fan of many calligraphers. My belief that only a good calligrapher can make good typography (1) has become even stronger. I'm now absolutely sure that only practice improves the skill, especially in this field. So, with this in mind, I started a font which was a challenge for me because sometimes the gap between paper and screen can be gigantic. Skill is another of my attemps (2) to capture the spirit of the pointed brush, its expressiveness, the passions and fears of the artist. This font is about freedom. Freedom everywhere. Movement, velocity, passion. To achieve this, many alternates and ligatures per glyph were designed. Use it on magazines, posters, book covers, music albums, t-shirts, skates, tattoos. NOTES (1) This is mostly referred to script fonts, though text fonts made by designers with a deep calligraphic background have at least to me, an extra charm. (2) See my fonts Live and Indie. TIPS Thanks to Open-Type, the font gives the user the chance to play and get many wonderful results: In example, using the font with “discretionary ligatures” activated will give more life to the written word. Some letters will jump of the base, while others will ligate or not with the following (typical of gestural calligraphy). Adobe Illustrator is recommended. STYLES Skill is the most complete style. It has all the alternates and ligatures that can be seen in the posters and more! Skill Standard is a variant with no decorative glyphs. It has the basic alphabet and some ligatures for better legibility.

Passport48 exclusively in otf. opentype format, originally debuted in 1997 as Passport, close to the beginning of the indie typographer boom. Almost 25 years have passed since it was introduced at MyFonts as PS1 and later in 2003 in TT TrueType.** It was designed by Joseph Coniglio of Coniglio Type as a revival. Historically, Passport was digitized from a shiny black enamel 1948 Royal Silent Deluxe portable. Kept on the ship of merchant marine, Captain John O’Learn, it was a salty manual typewriter with no intrinsic value as a collectable, even though it is awash as a work horse and a fine communicator of it’s time.. **NOTE: Little Passport family leaves the nest: The old weight variations, styles and formats have been eliminated to allow the original face to be stand alone, on its own attributes. For those purchasing their first typewriter fonts and to our diehard collectors as well, Passport presents a friendly new port-of-entry. A simple set, that is freed of many of the normal distressed points and paths that had made most “typewriters” authentic looking, but difficult to print and manipulate in layouts back in the day. It’s smooth nature comes from its impressions struck directly onto a piece of carbon paper bypassing the silk ink ribbon and going directly from metal to carbon paper transferring to a piece paper with very little tooth. Examine the glyphs to be certain you have what you need from this minimalist set, Passport48 is intended for ease of use and affordability. This is a warm font in a cold cruel world and a real port in the storm! It is versatile in today’s layouts with 24 years of worldwide sales. …Please enjoy the fruits of its travels, hoping your destinations and explorations into graphic design and letter composition are happy ones. -Joe Coniglio, the Pacific Northwest (2021).

City Streetwear is a sophisticated signature collection that includes four script weights and plenty of ligatures. City Streetwear scripts includes 102 ligatures and 6 alternates. Ligature programming has been added to the fonts to give the scripts a more handwritten and luxurious appeal. Try the City Streetwear free font for fashion marketing and social media. It is a great starting point for finding appealing modern catchwords. Use City Streetwear for sophisticated designing. Fonts and posters designed by Cindy Kinash. See font details below. SCRIPT FEATURES: Signature style OpenType Common ff fi fl ffi ffl ligatures  Available in Extended Latin Pro (Standard) or American (US) version. 102 ligatures and 6 alternates. Programmed ligature feature for optimization. Every time you type specific pairs, ligatures are programmed to pop up to avoid letter pair collisions. Programming ligatures gives the script a more sophisticated flow. Make sure to turn on the feature in your preferred program that supports ligatures. FREE WORDS FEATURES: 68 free words useful for fashion, marketing and social media promoting. Keyword examples include fashion, exclusive, and style. Intended use for fashion, apparel, beauty, marketing, social media, websites, magazines, sales, film and packaging.  VERSIONS: American (US) and Extended Latin Pro (Standard) AMERICAN (US) Shorter version  102 ligatures and 6 alternates  Common ff fi fl ffi ffl ligatures  OpenType Includes the common alphabet, numbers, American symbols and punctuation. EXTENDED LATIN PRO (Standard) Extended version of the American (US) version.  102 ligatures and 6 alternate Common ff fi fl ffi ffl ligatures  OpenType Includes characters for Albanian, Basque, Catalan, Cornish, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Feroese, Finnish Scots, French, Gaelic, Galician, German, Greek Transliterated, Hawaiian, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Nynorsk Bokmal Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Welsh. TIPS: Try the OpenType ligatures by turning on the feature in your preferred program that supports ligatures. DISPLAY- The City Streetwear fonts work best as large headline text for optimization. FONT USE- Use City Streetwear for fashion, apparel, beauty, marketing, social media, websites, magazines, sales, film and packaging.

Aldero™ strives to be as useful to any design environment as Alder trees are to the forest. Wildlife and insects feed on Alder leaves and seeds. The tree also provides shelter for animals in winter while its shades keep streams from getting too hot in summer. The trunks and branches are excellent habitats for lichens and mosses. The nitrogen-rich leaves help fertilize the soil where they landed. Alder’s utilitarian nature inspires us to create Aldero™, a handy, versatile, go-to type family for all professional designers. To achieve what we set out to do, we gave Aldero™ the two-in-one looks, doubled the sets of ligatures, and loaded it with plenty more of Opentype features. We put in long hours, months after months, until we are proud of the outcome. And we truly believe that you will enjoy working with this typeface as much as we do. With five weights, ten styles, and 1,100+ glyphs per style, this versatile typeface comes with virtually two looks. The standard glyph set is perfect for formal, corporate design, while the stylistic alternate set elicits a fun, friendly, and casual feel. You can use each style separately or mix and match them to achieve your design aesthetic. Thanks to these options, a wide range of design possibilities are at your fingertips. In addition to the two large sets of ligatures (for both the standard and the stylistic glyph sets), we also pack tons of Opentype features into Aldero™ to improve your user experience while working with this typeface. To activate the case-sensitive features, for example, highlight the phrase with the type tool, then hit the “All Caps” button; or select each mark, punctuations, or symbols with the type tool, then choose the case-sensitive option from the Opentype popup window. Hope you enjoy working with Aldero™ as much as we do! To find out more about Aldero™ Opentype features and type specimen, please visit https://r9typedesign.com/aldero-features

Handy Andy Andy Lethbridge had only just completed his graphic design BA at the University of Portsmouth when he was spotted by Jason, who’d seen Andy’s exquisite hand lettering at his degree show and on Instagram. Keen to push the handwritten theme further, having recently launched a digitally-created, chalky script font (FS Sammy), Jason offered Andy a job and the chance to develop a suite of more stylised, truly hand-drawn fonts. Andy duly got out his pads, pencils and pens, and started experimenting with styles and textures. Magic followed. Imperfection perfected Most ‘handwritten’ typefaces are created entirely digitally. Not FS Shepton. From the start, the intention was to create a collection of alphabets of similar character but different texture and style – 100% hand-drawn and purposely imperfect, with the kind of inconsistent, organic shapes and textures of market stall signs, dashed off in chalk or paint. FS Shepton Regular, drawn with a wet brush pen, is solid with a rough outer edge and a casual but controlled feel. The dry brush used to create FS Shepton Light gives it more inner texture and a more formal, slanted, calligraphic style. FS Shepton Bold, drawn using a wider, looser dry brush pen, has a woody grain in the middle of its broad strokes and greater solidity where the brush moves more slowly. Fresh as a daisy Think of FS Shepton not as a family of three weights of the same font so much as a collection of three fonts penned by the same author. All of them – the light, regular and bold – were created independently as display fonts that offer something different to labelling, packaging, point-of-sale and advertising. Lovingly crafted by hand, they’re a good match for products and settings that share the same artisinal qualities: organic foods, drinks and healthcare products, as well as premium chocolate, coffee and condiments.

What do you imagine the ideal casual invitation font would look like? It has to be cheerful, inviting, legible, creative, and loads of fun. But first and foremost, it has to look like real handwriting. Fonts seeming like real handwriting are always a major task, and although Canada Type already has plenty of fonts that solve the “looks like handwriting” issue in a variety of ways, we're once again raising the bar a little higher with this one. Birthday is a massive package that crosses the traditional font/handwriting solution of 2-letter ligatures and waltzes into the land of 3-letter combinations. Plenty of them, too! The complete Postscript and True Type versions of Birthday ship with no less than five separate fonts full of nothing but ligatures. And for even more realism, an alternates font is also included in the package, for a total of seven fonts of happy handwriting that can be used anywhere and everywhere personalization is of importance to a layout. For layout artists with advanced typography tools that take advantage of the power of OpenType, Birthday Pro is a wunderkind. All the individual letter alternates are accessible through the Stylistic Alternates feature, the 2-letter ligatures through the standard Ligatures feature, and the 3-letter ligatures via the Discretionary Ligatures feature (for the technically inclined: this includes a nice liga-to-dlig crossover, where the maximum number of possible ligated letters is automatically chosen at the push of a button). If you enjoy using OpenType, Birthday Pro is definitely for you. If on the other hand you like your fonts in Postsript or True Type, it is advisable to keep a character map handy while using Birthday. You will need it to take advantage of the many, many alternates and ligatures distributed over the fonts. The next time someone asks you for the perfect casual invitation font is, look no further. And as usually is with Canada Type, quality fonts are more affordable than ever.

Based on a specimen of an obscure and uncredited old face called Kitterland, Hamlet is one of those curiosities hardly ever noticed in the world of modern fonts, the kind that infuses a variety of historic Blackletter and calligraphy traits in an otherwise Roman alphabet. Such typefaces, what few of them exist, are almost always classified by typophiles as traditional decorative Roman alphabets. We beg to differ. We think such hybrids are fascinating enough to deserve a classification of their own. And we think today's aspiring letterers and type designers would benefit from paying special attention to this kind of hybrid alphabet, not only because it has much more hand than machine in it, but also because it is a prime example of how to succeed in mixing different lettering techniques into one self-contained and distinctly functional alphabet. As in any efficient mixture of lettering methods, Hamlet ended up with characters that are uniquely its own, such as the cupped A, M, V, W and Y, the very luscious and inviting curves on the arms of E, F, L and T, both single- and double-story forms of the a, and the humblest, friendliest g and y ever. A dozen alternate characters are sprinkled throughout the character set, so check out the map for a few pleasant surprises. We also made the Handtooled and Headstone styles because we thought these friendly forms were just crying out for such treatments. The Handtooled version turned out quite lovely, if we may say so ourselves, perhaps even better than the main font. The Headstone version is available as a free bonus to those who purchase the complete Hamlet package. All Hamlet styles come with lining figures as well as old style ones. Hamlet comes in all popular font formats. The OpenType fonts contain push-button swapping alternates and figures, which come in handy in software programs that support this kind of thing.

Beat Fool is my latest layered font. I love making layered fonts, because the possibilities are almost endless! Play around with transparency and your favourite colorschemes and patterns to create awesome effects! Beat Fool comes in two layers that plays well together. One layer is solid and can be used for shadow, fill, texture or other creative parts of your design. The second layer is the "Regular" one - the outline that made the basis for the font. I wanted the handmade and handwritten brushstrokes visible, to keep the flaws which makes the look more authentic. Every letter has 4 different versions, again to make things more natural and kind of random! Both layers can be used alone or as described, together - and since it has multilingual support, you can be creative in all kinds of languages! :)

We wanted to make an ultra-thin, tall font with a rough, hand-drawn look and ended up with more than we bargained for. To get the font we wanted we started by developing a source font for the basic letter shapes and we ended up with a whole bunch of variations of the basic style. Thus was born the new Ducatus family of fonts, starting with Ducatus Light which developed into the Medium and Heavy versions, and the Medium weight was ultimately used as the basis for the Ducatus Rough font, which was the goal of the project in the first place. Ducatus Rough was created by modifying Ducatus Medium in Photoshop using Gallery Effects and several other filter packages, and then redoing the outlines from scratch in Fontographer. A lot of work, but the result is just what we wanted.