Plantin is a family of text typefaces created by Monotype in 1913. Their namesake, Christophe Plantin (Christoffel Plantijn in Dutch), was born in France during the year 1520. In 1549, he moved to Antwerp, located in present-day Belgium. There he began printing in 1555. For a brief time, he also worked at the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands. Typefaces used in Christophe Plantin's books inspired future typographic developments. In 1913, the English Monotype Corporation's manager Frank Hinman Pierpont directed the Plantin revival. Based on 16th century specimens from the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, specifically a type cut by Robert Granjon and a separate cursive Italic, the Plantin" typeface was conceived. Plantin was drawn for use in mechanical typesetting on the international publishing markets. Plantin, and the historical models that inspired it, are old-style typefaces in the French manner, but with x-height that are larger than those found in Claude Garamond's work. Plantin would go on to influence another Monotype design, Times New Roman. Stanley Morison and Victor Larent used Plantin as a reference during that typeface's cutting. Like Garamond, Plantin is exceptionally legible and makes a classic, elegant impression. Plantin is indeed a remarkably accommodating type face. The firm modelling of the strokes and the serifs in the letters make the mass appearance stronger than usual; the absence of thin elements ensures a good result on coated papers; and the compact structure of the letters, without loss of size makes Plantin one of the economical faces in use. In short, it is essentially an all-purpose face, excellent for periodical or jobbing work, and very effective in many sorts of book and magazine publishing. Plantin's Bold weight was especially optimized to provide ample contrast: bulkiness was avoided by introducing a slight sharpening to the serifs' forms."

Art into type In 2008, Fontsmith were approached by their friend, Jon Scott, to investigate whether a typeface could assume the aesthetic of one artist’s body of work. Jon’s not-for-profit charity, Measure, was organising an event for the artist, Conrad Shawcross, whose giant mechanical installation, entitled Chord, was going on public display in the long-disused Kingsway tram tunnel in Holborn. Chord explores the way we perceive time, as either a line or a cycle. Two enormous machines with dozens of rotating arms and moving in opposite directions, weave rope with almost infinite slowness. An unusual brief Phil Garnham visited Conrad in his Hackney studio to get a feel for his work and ideas. “Conrad is a very clever and philosophical guy. He struggled to see how typeface design had any relevance to him and his art. This was going to be a challenge.” The artist presented the type designer with a pile of rope and a huge diagram of sketches and mathematical workings. “This was, in essence, my brief.” Phil developed three concepts, the simplest of which ticked all the boxes. “The idea of the strokes in the letterforms appearing and ending at peaks or points of origin fitted perfectly with Conrad’s idea of time occurring and ending at two ends of the sculpture.” Two versions Phil planned modules for two versions of the typeface: one with five lines in the letterforms and one with seven. He then drew the modules on-screen and twisted and turned them to build the machine that is FS Conrad. “This is not a simple headline typeface,” says Phil. “It’s not a rigid structure. It has varying character widths, and it’s informed by real typographic insight and proportions so that it actually works as piece of functioning, harmonious type.”

The hand-brushed Fave™ Set has ten informal scripts and other handwritten fonts made up of two subfamilies: Fave and the even-more informal Fave Casual, each have a primary script with a bold version and three other handwritten faces for a total of ten typefaces spanning the casual spectrum. All are optimized for large type use too so they look as good up close as they do set at smaller sizes. OpenType features The Fave family has a few features that happen largely in the background. All of the fonts use the OpenType Standard Ligature feature to automatically differentiate consecutive lowercase letters and numbers (using separate glyphs) and like our previous release Turbinado, they also automatically differentiate like characters that are separated by another letter. Alternate characters The script fonts have alternate uppercase and lowercase characters including multiple t (and double t) crossbar alternates that can be selected from the OpenType glyph table. Enable Contextual Alternates feature to automatically insert a bigger crossbar as the surrounding letters allow throughout a text box or document. You can also make your own custom lowercase t and crossbar to fit any situation–all of the lowercase t ascenders and crossbars are available separately in the OpenType glyph table, and can be combined and moved around manually. Stylistic sets and other goodies Fave Script and its bold counterpart have two Stylistic Sets. When enabled, one automatically substitutes non-connecting alternate characters at the ends of words, the other substitutes even bigger t crossbars than the Standard Ligature feature does. Smart apostrophes and ligatures Other subtle but hopefully helpful features include smart apostrophes, which insert themselves between two script characters in common situations without breaking their connection, and a few ligatures that also make character connections more seamless.

Night Train is a new font built from the ground up; while Night Train may resemble an old classic wood type there are a few lines that make this font a little more modern setting it apart from other wood type revivals. If you're a railroad enthusiast you're sure to enjoy the steam locomotive graphic located on the less than and greater than keys on all versions of this font, due to the fine detail of this train illustration the best printing results will be at 600dpi or higher on a laser printer. An alternate K and R are within the Night Train fonts, for Win Type1 these alternates are on the left and right bracket keys, for Truetype and OpenType you may access the alternates by using the Character Map in Windows or Adobe Illustrator, for OpenType you may also find them on the stylistic alternates page of the glyph map in Illustrator. There's something new with Night Train that the sign making people will love, for the first time FontMesa is pleased to offer a block shadowed version in four directions. One fill font is all that is needed for all four open faced fonts, you'll need an application that works in layers in order to use the fill font with the open faced fonts, simply place the fill font in its own layer then move it behind one of the open faced fonts of Night Train. The Night Train name has been on my list to use as a font name for a few years, a friend from years ago used to sail his boat in the Mackinac race from Chicago to Mackinac Island, the name of that boat was the Night Train. Watching the 2010 Olympic four man U.S. bobsled team win gold with their sled also called Night Train has inspired me to complete this font.

A girl’s handwriting written on the iPad Writing changes – throughout history over centuries, but also from generation to generation. Each new generation of students learns to write the basic forms of the letters a little differently than their predecessors. The role model is also changing. The cursive handwriting taught in school is getting closer and closer to printed type. The children no longer learn the forms of cursive handwriting required for connected writing, but first the “block letters”, only later should they develop their own individual handwriting from this, which many of them no longer do. And the writing tool is also changing. Of course, script looks different when children no longer learn to write on paper with a fountain pen, but on a tablet computer with the “pencil”. The writing experience is completely different, and the “material properties” are different too. There is practically no writing resistance that would make it difficult to move against the direction of writing. "Die Lara" was created based on the template by Lara Mörwald from the winter of 2023. The font version "Black" corresponds to the handwritten original, all thinner variants up to the wafer-thin "Hairline" are derived from it. In the variable font, the intermediate forms can be selected steplessly. In order to preserve the handwritten character of the font, "Die Lara" contains several alternates to most letters and numerals, so that different character forms alternate in the typeface. If the "ligatures" function is activated in the app (which is the default in most programs), these alternates appear automatically as you type. There is also an alternative "swashed" variant of some letters. So you can set somewhat livelier accents at the beginning or end of a word. "Die Lara" also contains fractions and tabular figures.

Kilkenny is a decorative, Victorian-style font based on the metal type named Nymphic that was designed by Hermann Ihlenberg. Ihlenburg was born in Germany in 1843 where he studied art and worked for several German type foundries. He moved to the USA in 1866 and worked for the L. Johnson & Co. foundry, later MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan. American Type Founders acquired this typeface when they took over the MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan foundry and Nymphic appears in the ATF catalog of 1896. For this digital version, the character set has been expanded to include accented characters, punctuation, and currency symbols—and most everything you would expect to find in a digital font. The original metal font consisted of swash caps, upper case characters, and a “morticed” lower case, which was raised off the baseline. This mortcied form was designed to nestle inside the ornate swash caps as well as to work with the upper case. The five digital versions contained in this set are basically different configurations of these different alphabet sets, they differ as follows: Kilkenny—the original upper case version with a modified lower case that has been enlarged, shifted to align along the baseline, and given taller ascenders to give it a more “regular” appearance. Kilkenny Eureka—true to the original design with the “morticed” or superior lowercase forms. Kilkenny Swash—original swash caps with the modified lower case. Kilkenny Swash Caps—original swash caps with the original caps as the lower case. Kilkenny Swash Eureka—swash caps that have been adjusted to match the weight of the original lower case forms. The OpenType version contains all of the above, plus additional Central European and Cyrillic characters for a total of almost 1000 glyphs.

Created with headline, logo and other short display work in mind, Duende comes in two weights with alternates for the upper and lowercase, consecutive characters are controlled with the OpenType Ligature feature. Display bigger lowercase crossbars as the surrounding characters allow with OpenType Contextual Alternates on, or create your own custom lowercase f or t with a non-crossbar character and one of the included crossbar options Other features include case-sensitive quotes and smart apostrophes. Duende has an alternate for every capital letter and multiple alternate options for the lowercase including swashy terminal characters and non-connecting alternates. Also included are a few clip-on swash elements that can be used to create initial and terminal forms. Duende uses smart crossbars for common situations, unifying Af, Aft, At, Att, Aff, tt and ff with a single crossbar when the OpenType Ligature feature in on. The Ligature feature also ensures subtle baseline variation when two lowercase characters are keyed twice in a row. Enable Contextual Alternates in your OpenType menu and Duende uses bigger f and t crossbars as the surrounding characters allow. Enable Discretionary Ligatures for lowercase o connections. You can also make your own lowercase f and t to fit any situation combining one of the included crossbars and non-crossbar f or t characters (available as ‘Alternates for Current Selection’ when f or t is selected). Just select the crossbar you want from the glyph table as a separate text element and move it anywhere. Also included are ten tt ligatures with crossbars and one without. Duende also has a few other swashy things that can be used to cross the lowercase f and t. Customize alternate capitals U, V, W, X and Y with any one of the swash options available in the glyph table for those characters.

Y’all ready for this? Now starting for Insigne: the new serif Mirantz. This rookie all-star plays a precise game every game, cutting at all the right angles to leave your reader impressed and ready to see more. You can always count on Mirantz to lead with solid mechanics and a clean style, but don’t be surprised when the face keeps it real with a little individual flare and creativity. This personal touch is nothing short of elegance in every appearance. So what makes us love this rookie above the other great players in the field? Contrast, for one. Mirantz brings more contrast to the game than most serifs out there. The serifs on this face have a crisp, sharp wedge that naturally draws the reader’s eye. You can’t help but fall in love with its clean, natural style. Mirantz also features a tall x-height and regular proportions that can play a number of positions on the page and still stay strong through the last half of the copy or even the final period. Mirantz is a solid powerhouse player, containing a complete set of small capitals and nine weights from thin to bold. It can play well both down low and up top with its subscripts and superscripts and can move your reader’s eye easily across the copy with its titling capitals, condensed and extended variants, and open style figures. With its options covering more than 72 Latin-based languages, look for this newcomer to have international success in the near future. It you haven’t set your draft picks for this next round of projects, think hard before passing up Mirantz. A capable serif like this one is a guaranteed asset to any team of fonts. Production assistance from Lucas Azevedo.

HWT Konop is a monospaced (fixed-width) typeface that is also square! Designed by Mark Simonson (Proxima Nova) as square characters that can be arranged vertically or horizontally and in any orientation. To a traditional letterpress job printer, a font like this wouldn’t make much sense. But to a modern letterpress printer it is an unusual and creative design toolkit. The bold gothic style is reminiscent of gothic wood types but more geometric. Since the characters are meant to be used in any orientation, the usual optical adjustments, such as making verticals thicker than horizontals and making tops smaller than bottoms are set aside. This results in a quirky but charming design. To provide more design options, Simonson came up with a modular system consisting of three sizes: 12-line, 8-line, and 6-line. These three sizes can be used together like Lego® bricks, with endless arrangements possible. And the sidebearing match so that characters always align when different sizes are used together. The digital version of Konop replicates the wood type version as much as possible, including the three different size designs. It includes OpenType stylistic sets that allow most characters to be rotated in place, 90° left, 90° right, or 180°, just like the wood type version. Extra characters not available in the wood type version are included with the digital fonts. The set of 3 is priced just $5 more than one single font, so order via "Package Options" HWT Konop is named for Don Konop, a retired Hamilton Manufacturing employee, who worked from 1959 to 2003. In addition to serving on the Two Rivers Historical Society Board from 2004 to present-day, he was also instrumental as a volunteer in helping with the museum’s move to its current home in 2013.

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

Plantin is a family of text typefaces created by Monotype in 1913. Their namesake, Christophe Plantin (Christoffel Plantijn in Dutch), was born in France during the year 1520. In 1549, he moved to Antwerp, located in present-day Belgium. There he began printing in 1555. For a brief time, he also worked at the University of Leiden, in the Netherlands. Typefaces used in Christophe Plantin's books inspired future typographic developments. In 1913, the English Monotype Corporation's manager Frank Hinman Pierpont directed the Plantin revival. Based on 16th century specimens from the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, specifically a type cut by Robert Granjon and a separate cursive Italic, the Plantin" typeface was conceived. Plantin was drawn for use in mechanical typesetting on the international publishing markets. Plantin, and the historical models that inspired it, are old-style typefaces in the French manner, but with x-height that are larger than those found in Claude Garamond's work. Plantin would go on to influence another Monotype design, Times New Roman. Stanley Morison and Victor Larent used Plantin as a reference during that typeface's cutting. Like Garamond, Plantin is exceptionally legible and makes a classic, elegant impression. Plantin is indeed a remarkably accommodating type face. The firm modelling of the strokes and the serifs in the letters make the mass appearance stronger than usual; the absence of thin elements ensures a good result on coated papers; and the compact structure of the letters, without loss of size makes Plantin one of the economical faces in use. In short, it is essentially an all-purpose face, excellent for periodical or jobbing work, and very effective in many sorts of book and magazine publishing. Plantin's Bold weight was especially optimized to provide ample contrast: bulkiness was avoided by introducing a slight sharpening to the serifs' forms."

Homelessfonts is an initiative by the Arrels foundation to support, raise awareness and bring some dignity to the life of homeless people in Barcelona Spain. Each of the fonts was carefully digitized from the handwriting of different homeless people who agreed to participate in this initiative. A biography/story of each homeless person captures their story, to help raise awareness and bring some dignity to the life of homeless people. Monotype is pleased to donate all revenue from the sales of Homelessfonts to the Arrels foundation in support of their mission to provide the homeless people in Barcelona with a path to independence with accommodations, food, social and health care. Juan Carlos was born in Barcelona, Spain 46 years ago. Since the age of 17 – and during eleven years – he worked double shifts of eight hours every day in a factory. Excessive work and family problems debilitated his health and he lost his job. He then faced a dilemma: to spend unemployment benefits to pay for rent or for food. For a few years, he worked helping in the kitchens of different restaurants while he lived on a pension, until he was definitively left without work and ended up living in the street for 10 years. “In the street I tried to find rest in the ATMs of banks. I preferred to be alone, and if I ran into conflictive people, I looked for somewhere else” he explains. Living in the street he was the victim of an aggression. Since then, with the help of Arrels he moved into a pension. Today, Juan Carlos is a volunteer in the shower service of Arrels, the same showers he used during years. He also collaborates with the maintenance team, helps prepare hygienic and cleaning material, and participates in activities such as the theatre group and the football team.

Write like the inventor of the diesel engine — it’s possible with the Diesel Rudolf Script (patterned after the original handwriting of Rudolf Diesel)... In 2008 the city of Augsburg and the MAN Group celebrated the 150th birthday of Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the diesel engine which was named after him. With the help of a few preserved original letters, it was possible to create a convincing digital version of Rudolf Diesel’s personal handwriting. The engineer and inventor Rudolf Diesel was born in Paris in 1858 and also went to school there. In1870 his family moved to England and Rudolf was sent to relatives in Augsburg where he continued going to school. Later, after completing his studies in Munich, he began working as an engineer in the machine factory Linde. Alone this part of his life makes clear why Rudolf Diesel’s handwriting was so ”jerky,“ hesitant and inconsistent. He learned to write according to the French style, that is, Latin cursive — completely different from the very correct and neat German handwriting taught at that time which he had to learn at 13 years of age. These circumstances explain why his handwriting is ”messy“ (especially for those days) with its mixtures of letter forms within a text, even within individual words. Plus, he obviously did not attach much importance to ”pretty writing.“ Sometimes the characters are wide, then narrow, sometimes large and clear and then again crammed and primitive. The individuality is emphasized with characteristics derived from quill and ink. The diversified images of the font Diesel Rudolf Script make more than 80 ligatures and stylistic alternates possible which can be selected with help from the OpenType functions Ligatures and Discretional Ligatures.

›Hi! Please note you are visiting Old Supernett. We decided to upgrade it: more styles, more glyphs, more features, more everything! View New Supernett here: Supernett 2019› Georg from FaceType Supernett – a versatile hand drawn/handmade/handwritten font – is tailored for large font sizes but also impresses with an astounding legibility in small typesettings. Supernett is fairly condensed for space-saving headlines. The extensive character set supports Central and Eastern European as well as Western European languages. Each style contains more than 4700 glyphs to let the font look real hand-made. Three OpenType features are specially created to enhance this impression, with a maximum effect when applied to big type: Alternating Letters For a truly hand-drawn look, letters and numerics alternate randomly between three different variants → activate Contextual Alternates Rotating letters All glyphs rotate randomly and slightly around their own axis → activate OpenType Swashes Varying Baseline Shift Each single glyph moves individually up or down → activate OpenType Titling Alternates More OpenType Features: Case Sensitive Forms This feature shifts various punctuation marks to a position that works better with all caps typography → It is deployed when an app’s all-caps styling is applied Slashed Zero The problem with the numeral 0 is that it can look too much like O in some typefaces. This feature replaces every zero with a slashed zero → activate Zero with a Slash Fractions Substitutes figures separated by a slash by proper fraction glyphs. A date however, written like 10/12/2013 will remain unchanged → activate Fractions Stylistic Set 03 Choose between two different styles of bullet (•) → activate Stylistic Set 03 Stylistic Set 04 Choose between two different styles of Y → activate Stylistic Set 04 View other fonts from Georg Herold-Wildfellner: Sofa Serif | Sofa Sans | Mila Script Pro | Pinto | Supernett | Mr Moustache | Aeronaut | Ivory | Weingut

Tomato is the digitization and quite elaborate expansion of an early 1970s Franklin Photolettering film type called Viola Flare. This typeface is an obvious child of funk, the audio-visual revolution that swept America and put an end to the art nouveau period we now associate with the hippy era. Funk is of course little more than jazz with a chorus and an emphatic beat. Nevertheless, it became the definition of cool in the 1970s, thanks to blaxploitation movies with excellent soundtracks like Shaft and Superfly. Funk began as a commercial audio experience, then later expanded its signature to cover everything, from design to fashion to the later birth of disco, which is really a further simplification of funk. Funk had very strong and unique typographical elements, particularly a kind of titling with an essentially western, wooden core that suddenly changed and flared in unexpected areas until a very individual brand was achieved. Everything that can be tacked on to the alphabet was used towards that individuality. Things like curls, swirls, swashes, ligatures were always plentiful in funk, sometimes giving the titling a specific gender, sometimes bulging, sometimes speeding, sometimes fading in the distance, sometimes doing nothing but crazily aligning with other design elements, but the result was always a fascinating creature that seemed to invariably want to dance and have fun. Tomato was built in exactly that spirit. The original film type certainly had enough swashes and curls to be an unmistakable funk font in itself, but our further expansion of it cements it and makes it the definite font for the genre. With as many as 12 different possibilities for some letters, the designer's choices for a titling set in Tomato are virtually limitless. The Postscript and True Type versions of Tomato come in five fonts, including two fonts for alternates, one font for ligatures, and one font for swashes. These are split into two affordable packages. The entire family package is also available at an even more affordable price, and includes complimentary Cyrillic, Greek, Turkish, and Central European versions of Tomato. A Tomato Pro OpenType version is also available. It is a single font that includes over 650 characters, glued together with extensive programming for convenience of use in OpenType-friendly applications, where you can watch the letters morph and dance as you push the buttons and change the options of your OT palette. Now you know which font will come to mind when someone says the word "funky".

The ITC Stone Sans II typeface family is new from the drawing board up. Sumner Stone, who designed the original faces in 1988, recently collaborated with Delve Withrington and Jim Wasco of Monotype Imaging to update the family of faces that bears his name. Sumner was the lead designer and project director for the full-blown reworking – and his own greatest critic. The collaborative design effort began as a relatively simple upgrade to the ITC Stone Sans family. As so often happens, however, the upgrade proved to be not so simple, and grew into a major design undertaking. “My initial intent,” recalls Sumner, “was to provide ITC Stone Sans with even greater versatility. I planned to add an additional weight, maybe two, and to give the family some condensed designs.” As Sumner began to look more closely at his twenty-year-old typeface, he decided that it would benefit from more extensive design improvements. “I found myself making numerous refinements to character shapes and proportions,” says Sumner. “The project scope expanded dramatically, and I’m pleased with the final result. The redesign has improved both the legibility and the overall appearance of the face.” The original ITC Stone Sans is part of the ITC Stone super family, along with ITC Stone Serif and ITC Stone Informal. In 2005 ITC Stone Humanist joined the family. All of these designs have always offered the same three weights: Medium, Semibold, and Bold – each with an italic counterpart. Over time, Stone Sans has emerged as the godfather of the family, a powerful design used for everything from fine books, annual reports and corporate identity programs, to restaurant menus, movie credits and advertising campaigns. ITC Stone Sans, however, lacked one attribute of many sans serif families: a large range of widths and weights. “These fonts had enjoyed great popularity for many years – during which graphic designers repeatedly asked for more weights and condensed designs in the family,” says Sumner. “Their comments were the impetus.” ITC Stone Sans II includes six weights ranging from an elegant Light to a commanding Extra Bold. An italic counterpart and suite of condensed designs complements every weight. In all, the new family encompasses 24 typefaces. The ITC Stone Sans II family is also available as a suite of OpenType Pro fonts, allowing graphic communicators to pair its versatile design with the capabilities of OpenType. These fonts offer automatic insertion of ligatures, small caps and use-sensitive figure designs; their extended character set also supports most Central European and many Eastern European languages. ITC Stone® Sans II font field guide including best practices, font pairings and alternatives.

It's a very happy day when we stumble upon beautiful alphabets that were never digitized. It is even a happier day when the beautiful alphabet finds its way to us through friends and people who like our work. Some two months ago, the forms of this gorgeous font were pointed to us by a friend who saw it in an old Dover Publications specimen book showcasing historical alphabets. It was there under the name Vanessa, with nothing else to go by. We looked and researched for further information but found nothing else. So this gem comes to you like a coal that winked its way out of the ashes because it wanted to shine again. Flirt is very authentic art deco with a noticeable element of artistic pride, swashy delicate majuscules and very aristocratic, fashionable and flirty minuscules. The majuscules can be used as every other capitals usually are, or as initial caps. The minuscules can very nicely stand on their own quite independently from the caps whenever desired. These letters are quite similar to the hand lettering used on of the kind of theater posters, specifically burlesque and opera entertainment, which are now considered very retro-chic and fashionable to see hanging on walls in home or office. The initial specimen we worked from showed a single basic art deco alphabet with numerals which seemed as they belonged to another font. That alphabet became the base Flirt font, the numerals were redrawn to fit much better with the minuscules, and the character set was greatly expanded to include punctuation, accented characters, and many many alternates, especially for the majuscules. Majuscules with a descending right vertical stroke were a common artistic touch in the high days of theater posters, so we thought they would be great additions to the character set. These alternates can be found all over the font. So to maximize the design fun, have a character map or glyphs palette handy when you use Flirt. After the base font was finished, we thought it would be a good idea to give it a bold treatment unlike anything seen out there, and the farthest thing from the mechanical bolds seen everywhere now. This bolding treatment consisted of thickening the lowercase's vertical strokes inwards, but leaving the horizontal stroke weight as is, and thickening only the thicker vertical strokes of the uppercase. The result is quite the visual feat. We encourage you to test both the regular and bold weights and see for yourself.

Whether you call them slab serif, square serif, or Egyptian, you know them when you see them – sturdy, nearly monoweight designs with blunt, straight-edged serifs and a no-nonsense attitude. The Rockwell® Nova family is a fine example of this appealing and eminently usable type style. This is a design that is both robust and adaptable. Marked by the flat top-serifs on the cap A, unusual Q tail and high-legibility two-storied lowercase a, Rockwell has a bit of handmade charm that distinguishes it from the cool, more modern interpretations of the slab serif style. The family is excellent for branding, headlines and other display uses. The simple shapes and hearty serifs also make it a good choice for short blocks of textual content in both print and on-screen environments. The light and bold weights are perfect for setting blocks of text copy, while the extra bold and condensed designs bring authority to display copy. Throw in a little color, and you amp up Rockwell’s messaging power. The regular and italic designs perform handsomely, in the most modest of screen resolutions. With four weights of normal proportions, each with a complementary italic, and three condensed designs, two with italics, the family is a commanding and versatile graphic communicator. Rockwell’s large x-height, simple character shapes and open counters, make for an exceptionally legible design. It should not, however, be set so tight that its serifs touch, as this will erode legibility and impair readability. A benefit to Rockwell’s slab serifs, however, is that the design combines beautifully with both sans serif typefaces and a variety of serif designs. Rockwell OpenType® Pro fonts have an extended character set supporting Greek, Cyrillic, most Central European and many Eastern European languages, in addition to providing for the automatic insertion of ligatures and fractions. Looking for its perfect pairing? Look no further than ITC Berkeley Old Style, Between™, ITC Franklin Gothic®, Harmonia Sans™, Metro® Nova or Frutiger® Serif.

Varidox, a variable typeface design, allows users to connect with specific design combinations with slightly varied differences in style. These variations in design enable the user to reach a wider scope of audiences. As the name suggests, Varidox is a paradox of sorts--that is, a combination of two disparate forms with two major driving influences. In the case of type design, the conflict lies in the age-old conundrum of artistic expression versus marketplace demand. Should the focus center primarily on functionality for the customer or err on the side of advancing creativity? If both are required, where does the proper balance lie? Viewed as an art, type design selections are often guided by the pulse of the industry, usually emphasizing unique and contemporary shapes. Critics are often leading indicators of where the marketplace will move. Currently, many design mavens have an eye favoring reverse stress. However, these forms have largely failed to penetrate the marketplace, another major driving factor influencing the font world. Clients now (as well as presumably for the foreseeable future) demand the more conservative forms of monoline sans serifs. Typeface designers are left with a predicament. Variable typefaces hand a great deal of creative control to the consumers of type. The demands of type design critics, personal influences of the typeface designer and the demands of the marketplace can all now be inserted into a single font and adjusted to best suit the end user. Varidox tries to blend the extremes of critical feature demands and the bleeding edge of fashionable type with perceptive usability on a scalable spectrum. The consumer of the typeface can choose a number between one and one-thousand. Using a more conservative style would mean staying between zero and five hundred, while gradually moving higher toward one thousand at the high end of the spectrum would produce increasingly contemporary results. Essentially, variable fonts offer the ability to satisfy the needs of the many versus the needs of the few along an axis with a thousand articulations, stabilizing this delicate balance with a single number that represents a specific form between the two masters, a form specifically targeted towards the end user. Practically, a user in some cases may wish to use more conservative slab form of Varidox for a more conservative clientele. Alternatively, the same user may then choose an intermediate instance much closer to the other extreme in order to make a more emphatic statement with a non-traditional form. Parametric type offers a new options for both designers and the end users of type. In the future, type will be able to morph to target the reader, based on factors including demographics, mood or cultural influences. In the future, the ability to adjust parameters will be common. With Varidox, the level of experimentality can be gauged and then entered into the typeface. In the future, machine learning, for example, could determine the mood of an individual, their level of experimentality or their interest and then adjust the typeface to meet these calculated parameters. This ability to customize and tailor the experience exists for both for the designer and the reader. With the advent of new marketing technologies, typefaces could adjust themselves on web pages to target consumers and their desires. A large conglomerate brand could shift and adapt to appeal to a specific target customer. A typeface facing a consumer would be more friendly and approachable, whereas a typeface facing a business to business (B2B) customer would be more businesslike in its appearance. Through both experience, however, the type would still be recognizable as belonging to the conglomerate brand. The font industry has only begun to realize such potential of variable fonts beyond simple visual appearance. As variable font continues to target the user, the technology will continue to reveal new capabilities, which allow identities and layouts to adjust to the ultimate user of type: the reader.