Now here's a font with an unusual backstory. You may recall that a while ago we discovered that Tim Burton was using an outdated version of one of our fonts for the interior titles in his The Corpse Bride. Well, our quest to get hold of him didn't bear any immediate fruit, but in a totally unrelated event we were contacted by the graphic arts company working with the overseas distributors for The Corpse Bride and it turned out that they needed a font based on the main title of the movie so they could keep the same style when they retitled it into other languages. The original title was either hand lettered or a heavily modified font, bearing some resemblance to our Ligeia and Tuscarora fonts, so we had to create a whole font more or less from scratch and extrapolate most of the letters from the very limited sample in the original title by identifying certain consistent characteristics and building new characters around them. It was a lot of work, but the good news is that they didn't want exclusivity, so we've got the font to add to our collection. We ended up calling it Beynkales which means 'Bone Bride' in Yiddish, which makes sense given the context of the movie. So here it is, in all its tattered glory, and bound to end up in our Halloween font selection later this year as well. Beynkales Alternate is a companion font that includes a full set of alternative upper and lower case characters which can be used on their own or in combination with the characters from Beynkales to create a more varied and handwritten look.

Meet Haggis! Inspired by the Insular Half-Uncial and Uncial typefaces that have long been associated with Scotland, Ireland, and their Celtic cousins, Haggis is an unusual creature. Unlike traditional Uncials, he's monoline, rounded, sausagey, and distinctly lighthearted! Use him for posters, signage (especially pub signs!), kids' stuff, and packaging — anyplace a little quasi-Celtic flavor is desired, but with a fun twist. Must we say it? He's a Funcial! Tongue-in-cheek though he may be, Haggis has some great features. He comes in Lean and Overstuffed forms, and has full true small caps, standard(ish) Roman alternates for the more out-there characters, lots of ampersand forms (including a true[ish] "Et" and a Tironian and), fun quasi-Celtic bullets, and lots of ligatures. Try him out today — with some tatties and neeps!

Carnero™ is a feisty hybrid of precise geometry and calligraphic flair; a design that walks that fine line between being sensible and a standout. In an increasingly monotone typographic landscape – Carnero has a unique pulse that moves the reader along with a new energy. Carnero gives life to simple utility with kinetic letter shapes, open apertures, and generous counters Drawn by Steve Matteson for the Monotype Studio, Carnero’s versatility is its strength. From digital ads and applications to packaging and branding, Carnero is comfortable and contemporary. The lightest and boldest weights create inviting headlines, while the middle weights read well for body copy. Used together, they build a lively brand and a clear hierarchy. Matteson infused Carnero with a modernist exterior resting on a 10th century calligraphic foundation. Delightful flourishes on the capital R and K, and lowercase a, k and l, give the design a distinctive demeanor; while the alternate italic swash caps are a saucy nod to the scribes. The result is a design that is warm, approachable – and a bit lighthearted. Matteson describes Carnero as, “transcending the static posture of the geometric sans genre.” The Carnero family is a compact collection of six distinct weights, ranging from an engaging light to an authoritative black, each with an italic counterpart. Its extended Latin character set ensures worry-free localization for eastern/western European languages. This is a design that will prove its value many times over. Matteson has drawn over 80 distinctive typeface families for major corporations, branding firms and retail sales. His passions for the outdoors and performing music balances an intense focus on work – and subtly finds its way into typefaces like Carnero. Matteson has designed custom fonts for three generations of the Microsoft Xbox® game console, the original core fonts for the Android® mobile-phone platform, in addition to branding typefaces for Toyota®, Rocket Mortgage®, and Google®. He also drew the Kootenay™ family, Monotype’s proprietary branding typeface. Matteson’s retail designs range from the elegant and utilitarian Open Serif™ (a companion to Google’s Open Sans), to a growing series of Frederic Goudy revivals. Carnero Variables are font files which are featuring one axis and have a preset instance from Light to Black.

Carnero™ is a feisty hybrid of precise geometry and calligraphic flair; a design that walks that fine line between being sensible and a standout. In an increasingly monotone typographic landscape – Carnero has a unique pulse that moves the reader along with a new energy. Carnero gives life to simple utility with kinetic letter shapes, open apertures, and generous counters. Drawn by Steve Matteson for the Monotype Studio, Carnero’s versatility is its strength. From digital ads and applications to packaging and branding, Carnero is comfortable and contemporary. The lightest and boldest weights create inviting headlines, while the middle weights read well for body copy. Used together, they build a lively brand and a clear hierarchy. Matteson infused Carnero with a modernist exterior resting on a 10th century calligraphic foundation. Delightful flourishes on the capital R and K, and lowercase a, k and l, give the design a distinctive demeanor; while the alternate italic swash caps are a saucy nod to the scribes. The result is a design that is warm, approachable – and a bit lighthearted. Matteson describes Carnero as, “transcending the static posture of the geometric sans genre.” The Carnero family is a compact collection of six distinct weights, ranging from an engaging light to an authoritative black, each with an italic counterpart. Its extended Latin character set ensures worry-free localization for eastern/western European languages. This is a design that will prove its value many times over. Matteson has drawn over 80 distinctive typeface families for major corporations, branding firms and retail sales. His passions for the outdoors and performing music balances an intense focus on work – and subtly finds its way into typefaces like Carnero. Matteson has designed custom fonts for three generations of the Microsoft Xbox® game console, the original core fonts for the Android® mobile-phone platform, in addition to branding typefaces for Toyota®, Rocket Mortgage®, and Google®. He also drew the Kootenay™ family, Monotype’s proprietary branding typeface. Matteson’s retail designs range from the elegant and utilitarian Open Serif™ (a companion to Google’s Open Sans), to a growing series of Frederic Goudy revivals. Carnero Variables are font files which are featuring one axis and have a preset instance from Light to Black.

The bâtarde flamande is a style of writing used predominantly in France and present-day Belgium in the 15th century. The style shares an ancestry with other writing styles traditionally grouped as blackletter— fraktur, textura, rotunda, and schwabacher. It had evolved, however, into an æsthetic far removed from its relatives. While high-contrast in nature, the bâtarde flamande is more delicate and dynamic than the austere and condensed fraktur and textura. Quick curves lack the rigidity of the schwabacher and rotunda. Flair through swashes is thematic, as are the variations in letterforms. The flowing rhythm, achieved through a letterform axis that is overall slightly rightward, is most noticable in the hallmark f and long s. Round forms are fused together for economy of space. It is a writing hand that, with its syncopation and fluidity, produces a vibrance uncharacteristic of other blackletters. Givry has been created in the spirit of the bâtarde flamande. It melds the particular traits compiled from the works of the style’s prominent scribes—Jean Fouquet, Loyset Liédet, and Jean Bourdichon. While suitable as an elegant and energetic display face, Givry was conceived for setting continuous text. The result of many refinements and adjustments is the preservation of the style’s irregular nature, as well as a consistency that continuous-text typography requires. Carefully researched and developed in OpenType format for a wealth of typographic features and support for more than forty languages, Givry is neither derivative nor experimental, but historically accurate. Of the many blackletter digital typefaces available, fraktur and all its connotations have become representative. In contrast, the bâtarde flamande is essentially non-existent in digital form, and has until now been overlooked. Givry provides designers and anyone searching for typographic expression a lively, delicate, and striking side to blackletter.

Think smart. Think regal. Think SteamCourt, a new font designed specifically for the card game SteamCourt. A bit of background if you will: In early 2014, some friends from my college days banded together to form their own game company. Their first launch? A current Kickstarter they named SteamCourt. I love Kickstarter. It’s a fantastic platform, a great way for individuals to introduce the public to their visions. I've started a couple of them myself--both including fonts designed specifically for the projects. The first is Chatype, a font created exclusively for the city of Chattanooga. The second: Cabrito, a font developed as part of the children’s typeface book, The Clothes Letters Wear. It’s wonderful to work with so many others who come alongside to help you vision become reality. Naturally, hearing of my friends' project, I contacted them about adding a new face to their venture as well. I gave them carte blanche. They wanted steampunk. It was a great challenge, the result of which is now SteamCourt, an unforgettable display typeface that draws from the mix of Victorian regals, metallic and brass engineering, cogs, clocks and blackletter typography. It evokes a time of skillfully forged metalwork and an era of intrigue and excitement, filled with audacious feats of engineering and innovation and the perilous journeys of the airship. While influenced by the era of blackletter, SteamCourt is an unmistakable departure from the style of two centuries past, yet it still shines in its given display roles with a distinct regal twist. The serifs are asymmetrical, yet the characters are all specially and delicately balanced. It’s an eye-catching alternative to blackletter with modern steampunk touches. The game’s signature typeface has sizeable language support on top of 90 alternate characters as well. In addition to a generous number contextual alternates, SteamCourt features stylistic alternates that allow for buyers to customize its visual appearance for their preferences, helping to make it a superior option for packaging, branding and enormous typesetting logotypes as well as shorter textual content. Check out the game, but grab the font, too, to be a part of that crib created as a companion for the new game in court. It'll be the ace up your sleeve for many rounds of design ahead.

Italiano Fushion is part of an expanding project on which we have been working for several years and is the colors ersion of ITALIANO FUSHION. Starts from the study of the great Futurist adventure of the early 1900s by great artists such as DEPERO and MARINETTI, who twisted the world of typography with shapes and colors. Italian Fushion is made up of almost 2,000 glyphs for each weight and in addition to hundreds of alternatives mainly, such as initials and endings of each word but also different alternatives for the letters I, J, Y. Thanks to the characteristics of Open Type, you can change them in automatic many of the alternatives, use it as a simple text font by changing only the I's and J's that have the typical capital dot, and giving the text a more fun breath to the composition. Italiano Fushion is suitable for large texts and to get the most out of it it is compulsory to transform the text into UPPERCASE text using the tabs of graphic applications such as Illustrator, or activate the Alternavive tabs and the various options of SS. You just need do a sandwitch between the 1 ( on the top ) and the 2 ( on the bottom ), choose the 2 different color and you hae finished. by transforming them into traces you can enrich the interaction between the two levels with nuances of pleasure. If you would like to be above layer 2, you can make the text parts transparent without swashes. Ideal for creating Logos, Head Lines, Web Titles, Posters, Epub Covers, Tatoo Projects, T-Shirts, Drink Labels ...

Pekin is an unusual design with an oriental flavor. It was originally designed by Ernst Lauschke and released by The Great Western Type Foundry of Chicago as “Dormer,” which is similar to the French verb ‘to sleep,’ not exactly a marketing triumph. Barnhart Bros. And Spindler (independently-operated subsidiary of ATF since 1911) bought Great Western in 1918. According to McGrew, AMERICAN METAL TYPEFACES of the TWENTIETH CENTURY, BB&S renamed the typeface prior printing their 1925 specimen book — guess they wanted something just a tad more exciting. Quirky, distinctive and fun. Pekin ML represents a major extension of the original release, with the following changes: 1. Added glyphs for the 1250 Central Europe, the 1252 Turkish and the 1257 Baltic Code Pages. Added glyphs to complete standard 1252 Western Europe Code Page. Special glyphs relocated and assigned Unicode codepoints, some in Private Use area. Total of 415 glyphs (compared to 218 glyphs in the original release). 2. 652 Kerning Pairs. Note: Ag, Aj and gj will cross unless kerned. Alternative A may also be used. 3. Added OpenType GSUB layout features: onum, salt, liga, dlig, hist, ornm and kern. 4. Revised vertical metrics for improved cross-platform line spacing. 5. Refined various glyph outlines, based on improved scans. 6. Added set of Tabular Numbers at cap height, based on original design; added Old-Style Numbers based on default design. 7. Added a bunch of alternative characters: 18 upper case letters, 10 lower case letters, 1 ampersand and 1 bullet. The alternate c is actually the original design, but I don't like it - easily confused with e. Alt E H M h m n r t are from the original design. I added the rest. 8. 7 Ligatures, 4 Ornaments, 18 Geometric Shapes, 6 Arrows and 12 Misc. Symbols. The zip package includes two versions of the font at no extra charge. There is an OTF version which is in Open PS (Post Script Type 1) format and a TTF version which is in Open TT (True Type)format. Use whichever works best for your applications.

Introducing Dirtstorm—the ultimate street stencil typeface that is sure to make your message stand out from the rest. With its raw, hand-cut edges and tattered texture, this font exudes an undeniable edge that will leave an impression on anyone who sees it. Featuring unique OpenType ligatures, Dirtstorm creates bespoke character sequences that add an extra layer of realism to your design. Whether you’re creating posters, flyers, or social media graphics, this typeface is the perfect way to convey your message with a distinct, grungy tone. Dirtstorm is not your typical, cookie-cutter font. It’s a rebellious, handcrafted typeface that embraces the imperfections and roughness of street art. So if you’re looking for a font that speaks volumes and demands attention, look no further than Dirtstorm. Most Latin-based European writing systems are supported, including the following languages. Afaan Oromo, Afar, Afrikaans, Albanian, Alsatian, Aromanian, Aymara, Bashkir (Latin), Basque, Belarusian (Latin), Bemba, Bikol, Bosnian, Breton, Cape Verdean, Creole, Catalan, Cebuano, Chamorro, Chavacano, Chichewa, Crimean Tatar (Latin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dawan, Dholuo, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Fijian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Frisian, Friulian, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, Ganda, Genoese, German, Greenlandic, Guadeloupean Creole, Haitian Creole, Hawaiian, Hiligaynon, Hungarian, Icelandic, Ilocano, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Jamaican, Kaqchikel, Karakalpak (Latin), Kashubian, Kikongo, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Kurdish (Latin), Latvian, Lithuanian, Lombard, Low Saxon, Luxembourgish, Maasai, Makhuwa, Malay, Maltese, Māori, Moldovan, Montenegrin, Ndebele, Neapolitan, Norwegian, Novial, Occitan, Ossetian (Latin), Papiamento, Piedmontese, Polish, Portuguese, Quechua, Rarotongan, Romanian, Romansh, Sami, Sango, Saramaccan, Sardinian, Scottish Gaelic, Serbian (Latin), Shona, Sicilian, Silesian, Slovak, Slovenian, Somali, Sorbian, Sotho, Spanish, Swahili, Swazi, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Tetum, Tongan, Tshiluba, Tsonga, Tswana, Tumbuka, Turkish, Turkmen (Latin), Tuvaluan, Uzbek (Latin), Venetian, Vepsian, Võro, Walloon, Waray-Waray, Wayuu, Welsh, Wolof, Xhosa, Yapese, Zapotec Zulu and Zuni.

Presentation QuarterBraille (Abbreviated as "QB" thereafter) is a decorative, steganographic and lattice font. Its core design concept is that Braille dots are represented as "quarters of a square"[1]. This is illustrated by posters 1 and 2 (NB: these glyph parts will be called "QB dots" thereafter). The other glyph parts (see poster 3) are purely decorative and meaningless in terms of Braille dots encoding[2]. All glyph parts are meant to generate a wide variety of patterns from horizontal and vertical combinations of glyphs. There is also a graphic convention to differentiate uppercase from lowercase letters with the presence or absence of shape subparts (in the "endings", "quarter of a circle with a ring" and "quarter of a diamond with a small square in the middle") like shown by poster 4. This font is suitable for very short texts (e.g. logos, acronyms, quotes, ambigrams, pangrams, palindromes, etc...) but on the other hand it may be used for steganographic purpose like geocaching as well as fictive alphabets (e.g. Alien/SciFi/Fantasy/Antique civilizations). Posters 1. Font Logo: the displayed text is " Quarter " followed by " Braille". There's a rainbow layer above the text to highlight the "QB dots", this is achieved by A..Z glyphs with "only QB dots" (codes 230..255) 2. Anatomy of a Glyph (L) and "QB Dots" (quarters of a square) 3. Glyphs Parts: Square and Cross (Inverted square), Circle and Inverted Circle (with or without the small circle in the middle), Diamond (with or without the small square in the middle), Inverted Square and Circle, Shape combos, Ending 4. Uppercase vs Lowercase (tiny shape subparts are shown in red) 5. Sample 1: Bathroom sink with QB tiles on the credence 6. Sample 2: Hands knuckle tatoos: "LOVE/HATE"[4] 7. Sample 3: Poker Hand: pocket Aces. It's an Ace of Hearts (Ah) on the left and an Ace of Spades (As) on the right. Like in regular cards, the card value (e.g. Ah) is displayed twice: at the top and rotated by 180 degrees at the bottom. This poster also illustrates that QB could be used to print embossed playing cards with tactile and visual display of card values. 8. Sample 4: Pangram: "Adept quick jog over frozen blue whisky mix" 9. Sample 5: Latin Magic Square: "SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS" (NB: for compensation of the 2/3 glyph ratio, letters on each line are separated by a space: "S A T O R", ...). 10. Sample 6: Quote of Mahatma Gandhi: "Learn as if you will live forever, live like you will die tomorrow.". This is also a demonstration of border glyphs combinations. 11. Sample 7: Steganography use case: the text is a sequence of 64 aminoacids (1 Letter notation), this protein was described in a research paper "The complete Aminoacid sequence of an amyloid fibril protein AA of unusual size (64 residues) 1975". 12. Sample 8: Border Glyphs with the provided styles and mixed styles. The words are the same than in poster 9 ("SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS"). Despite the 2/3 glyph ratio, the "TENET cross" was achieved by both inserting spaces in horizontally ("T ENE T") and by using the "thin borders glyphs". Notes a. Border glyphs[3] are meant to enhance the esthetics of text samples displayed with QB b. Special characters (e.g. *$()[].,;:&@# ...) are provided and follow the NABCC (North American Braille Computer Code) convention. c. A..Z Glyphs with only the "QB dots" are provided as demonstrated by posters 1 and 2 (A/N: this was very useful to create them). d. Glyph Map: 32..64: Special characters - 161..187: "Thin variant" of Border glyphs, 192..229: Border glyphs, 230..255: A..Z with only the "QB dots" - Codes 176 an 181 are "regular SPACE" (empty glyph). Footnotes 1. There is indeed two shapes which represent the braille dot: the "quarter of a square" and the "quarter of a cross". It's because a cross may be considered as an "inverted square" because the square corners are merged in the center. 2. That's why the SPACE glyph is only made of decorative/meaningless glyph parts (i.e. no "QB dots"). 3. For other fonts with border glyphs, please take a look at my other "decorative Braille fonts" (GoBraille, HexBraille, KernigBraille, StackBraille, MaBraille, DiamondBraille, LorraineBraille). 4. LOVE/HATE knuckle tatoos are inspired by the anthology scene from "The Night of the Hunter" movie (Charles Laughton 1955), it also appearead in "Do The Right Thing" movie (Spike Lee 1989). Disclaimer This font is not appropriate and not meant to print text documents in Braille for the blind readers audience.

While it is obvious that this is an ornamental style font, it is more than that: it is a Celtic Knotwork design tool! Irish, Scottish, Welsh, even Norse and Viking cultures have used knotwork designs for millenia. These ancient traditional interwoven designs are experiencing a revival as Celtic culture gains exposure in the modern world. Intricate Celtic knots are featured everywhere from jewelry to tattoos. While many enjoy them simply for their beauty and fascinating twists, they can also be used to add an air of myth, magic and mystery to any project. The interlaced lines make them perfect for wedding invitations, borders, dividers and rules, web graphics, and logos. I began using Celtic knotwork designs in my own work as part of my knifemaking and jewelry making hobbies. I read all of the books I could find about Celtic knots and at first I drew them by hand with pencil and paper. Then as I realized how nice it would be to have "undos" I switched over to using Corel Draw. Draw proved to be a natural for this type of artwork with tools like contour and the trim function. But even with these great tools, it was still tedious to create these designs. I noticed that I was able to reuse a lot of parts in repetitive sections. I developed a small library of reusable bits and chunks of Celtic designs. I found them so useful and fun to work with that I began thinking about ways to market my Celtic design kit. I thought about CDR and EPS formats, but then I thought of creating this toolset as a True Type Font. That way anyone with ANY program that uses fonts could easily create Celtic knotwork designs. Word processors, embroidery programs, engraving programs, jewelry design programs, CAD/CAM programs...almost every program can use fonts. I was also interested in CNC work and thought that this font would work well for applications such as laser etching, vinyl signs, and machining. With that in mind, I designed each character of the font with extremes of accuracy. If one character from the font is used at one inch tall, every control point will be placed to an accuracy of better than 0.0001 inch. I wanted every piece to meet exactly with the next, with no possibility for misalignment. The different styles are all very carefully created to fit accurately with each other. So the Filled Style fits exactly into the Outline Style, and the Inverse Style fits precisely around the Outline Style so as to make up the background behind the knotwork. Combining the styles allows you to have complete creative control. By assembling the nearly 200 pieces it is quite easy to produce very complex designs. It is actually a bit like playing with a puzzle and many people really enjoy putting the pieces together to make designs. In fact, I have had many customers tell me of how they love playing with this font and making knots into the wee hours of morning. If you like puzzles then you will absolutely love this font! And creating the patterns is just the beginning of the fun! If you apply your favorite Photoshop tricks on them you can make anything from dazzling chrome knotwork to carved stone. Photoshop plug-ins like SuperBladePro are great for converting knotwork text into corroded bronze or rusted iron. Use your knotwork to add texture to a virtual landscape, or add them as surface embelishments on architecture and furniture. You can also make round knotwork by using this font with "WordArt" (WordArt is included with every copy of Microsoft Word. See http://clanbadge.com/round_knots.htm for a tutorial on how to make round knotwork). For Crafters there are limitless uses for this font. It has been used for embroidery, jewelry, leatherwork, stencils, stained glass, quilting, painting, pyrography, woodcarving and lots more. We have even sold copies to monks for use in decorating handmade books!

Buffalo Bill is a revival of an old favorite font that’s been around since 1888, the James Conner’s Sons foundry book of that same year is the oldest source I've seen for this old classic. If you're looking for the font used as the logo for Buffalo Bill’s Irma Hotel in Cody Wyoming please refer to the FontMesa Rough Riders font. New to the Buffalo Bill font is the lowercase and many other characters that go into making a complete type font by today’s standards. The Type 1 version is limited to the basic Latin and western European character sets while the Truetype and OpenType versions also include central and eastern European charcters. William F. (Buffalo Bill) Cody called America’s Greatest Showman was one of the United State’s first big celebrity entertainers known around the world, millions of people learned about the Old West through Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows which traveled throughout the United States and Europe. William Cody, at age eleven, started work on a cattle drive and wagon train crossing the Great Plains many times, he further went on to fur trapping and gold mining then joined the Pony Express in 1860. After the Civil War Cody went on to work for the Army as a scout and hunter where he gained his nickname Buffalo Bill. In 1872 William Cody started his entertainment career on stage in Chicago along with Texas Jack who also worked as a scout, the Scouts of the Prarie was a great success and the following year it expanded to include Wild Bill Hickok and was eventually named The Buffalo Bill Combination. By 1882 Texas Jack and Wild Bill Hickok had left the show and Buffalo Bill conceived the idea for the traveling Wild West Show using real cowboys, cowgirls, sharpshooters and Indians plus live buffalo and elk. The Wild West shows began in 1883 and visited many cities throughout the United States. In 1887 writer Mark Twain convinced Cody to take the show overseas to Europe showing England, Germany and France a wonderful and adventuruos chapter of American history. The shows continued in the United States and in 1908 William Cody combined his show with Pawnees Bill’s, in 1913 the show ran into financial trouble and was seized by the Denver sheriff until a $20,000 debt (borrowed from investor Harry Tammen) could be paid, Bill couldn't pay the debt and the loan could not be extended so the assets were auctioned off. William Cody continued to work off his debt with Harry Tammen by giving performances at the Sell’s-Floto Circus through 1915 then performed for another two years with other Wild West shows. William F. Cody passed away in 1917 while visiting his sister in Denver and is buried on Lookout Mountain joined by his wife four years later. Close friend Johnny Baker, the unofficial foster son of William Cody, began the Buffalo Bill Memorial Museum in 1921, over the years millions of people have visited William Cody’s grave and museum making it one of the top visitor attractions in the Denver area. William F. Cody romantisized the West creating the Wild West love affair that many still have for it today through books and cinema.

Centennial Script was designed and cut by Hermann Ihlenburg in 1876 (the centennial of American independence, hence the typeface's name) for the MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan foundry in Philadelphia. Ihlenburg was then only 33 years old, and these beautiful forms put him on his way to become the most prolific and innovative deco, ornamental and script typeface designer and punch cutter of the nineteenth century. In trying to be a true homage to the history of the new world, Centennial Script transcends its then-contemporary deco fashion to embrace script elements historically similar to lettering found on maps or political documents of the 18th century. Letters like the p and s extend themselves high and mighty to accentuate words and lines of text in a fancy hand-drawn manner. The dots on the i and j are those of a careful scribe who acknowledges the importance of the document being lettered. The lowercase letters connect with two slight angular motions of the hand, also very carefully and elegantly. Even the ligatures and ending swashes Ihlenburg made for this face were reminiscent of a mapmaker's patient hand, though Ihlenburg's elegant touch in them cannot be mistaken. Although Centennial Script was one of the few Ihlenburg faces to make it to film type technology, the transition was neither credited nor faultless. The film type version was a bit sloppy in the way the connectors were made, so the lowercase needed a lot of manual work to typeset properly. To alleviate such waste of time for the user of this digital version, the connectors were redrawn according to the original metal ones made by Ihlenburg himself, and tested thoroughly in print to ensure the quality of the typeface's flowing cursive nature. This wasn't an easy task, and very time-consuming, since the changing angles on both ends of the connection made it impossible to escape from having to build every lowercase letter with both left and right connectors that would fit with the rest of the letters. This is one typeface that couldn't be revived in any other manner than the way it was originally made, regardless of more than 130 years of technological advances since the face was designed. Centennial Script comes in all popular font formats, and supports most Latin-based languages. Also included is an Alts fonts that contains alternates, ligatures, snap-on swash endings, some ornaments, as well as a complete set of the lowercase without left side connectors, for a more natural combination when following a majuscule, or just in case the user finds it fit to set the copy in a non-connecting script instead of the face's original connected flow. Centennial Script Pro, the OpenType version, combines the main font with the Alts font in a feature-packed single font. Use the ligature feature to set wordmarks like Mr, Ms, Mrs, Dr, and &Co, the stylistic alternates feature to replace some letters with their alternative forms, the contextual alternates feature for better uppercase-lowercase sequences, and the titling feature to set your text in a disconnected script. Centennial Script is the only script we currently know of that can be set connected or disconnected simultaneously, either using the titling feature in the OpenType Pro version, or manually in the other formats.

Jill Bell's typefaces are energetic, highly decorative, and refreshingly unpredictable. Some are friendly and childlike, while others are rough and nervous. Her latest creation is ITC Swank, a connected script whose shabby-chic" sophistication communicates a worn elegance. Bell begins the design process "with black stuff on white paper," she explains, preferring to draw letters before she digitizes them. Often the inspiration for her typefaces comes from a piece of hand-lettering. "Bruno began as a reminder to buy cat food," she says, "and ITC Swank started out as a small bit of lettering for Wurlitzer Pianos." Bell finds that working with blocks of lettering is a good start for script typefaces. "If I'm drawing a script typeface, I have to write out sentences in the letters first," she explains. "Drawing each letter separately doesn't establish the flow and spontaneity that scripts deserve." Bell's newest design is ITC Swank. It's a somewhat tattered formal script with definite links to early copperplate scripts. Though probably not for wedding invitations, Swank's elegant underpinnings are evident, with its slightly narrow proportions and a baseline that can best be called "bouncy." Graphic designers will appreciate the abundance of swash letters, making it easy to create distinctive headlines and short blocks of copy. Bell has a fondness for the "open, genuine" quality of Chinese and Japanese calligraphy. "Eastern styles incorporate the natural flow of the hand," she says. "Natural, human qualities shine through. Mistakes are accepted, not scorned as in the 'white-out' Western culture." This philosophy is evident in Bell's own designs. Whether it's ITC Clover 's carefree spirit, the slightly spooky Hollyweird, Caribbean 's< rustic charm or the weathered elegance of ITC Swank, there is a natural honesty in her work."

ROARRR! THE STYLES -Pantera Pro is the most complete style, and although its default look is mono-rhythmic it gets really playful and crazy like the examples of the posters by just activating the Decorative Ligatures button in the Open-type Panel of Adobe Illustrator. However, I recommend using also the Glyphs Panel because there you'll find much more variants per letter. Pantera Pro is in fact, coded in a way the combination of thicknesses will always look fantastic. -Pantera Black Left, and Pantera Black Right are actually “lite” versions of Pantera Pro: They have very little Open-Type code, so what you see here is what you get. Pantera Black Left has its left strokes thick, while Pantera Black Right has its right strokes thick. -Pantera White is a lovely member in this family that looks lighter and airy, hence its name. With the feature Standard Ligatures activated (liga) the font gets very playful. -Pantera Caps is based on sign painters lettering and since it follows the same pointed brush rules as the other styles, it matches perfectly. -Pantera Claws like its name suggests, is a set of icons that were done by our dear panther. THE STORY It is said that typography can never be as expressive as calligraphy, but sometimes it can get close enough. I tend to think that calligraphic trials, in order to work well as potential fonts, need first to go through very strict filters before going digital: While calligraphy is synonym of freedom (once its rules are mastered), type-design, in the other hand, has its battlefield a little tighter and tougher. When I practice pointed brush lettering, there are so many things happening on the paper. And most of them are delicious. The ones who know my work may see that although many of my fonts are very expressive, my handmade brush trials are much more lively than them. With that in mind, this time I tried to go further and rescue more of those things that are lost in the process of thinking type when first sketches are calligraphic. I wondered if I could create something wild, hence its name Panther, by understanding the randomness that sometimes calligraphy conveys and turning it to something systemic: With Pantera, I created an ordered disorder. Like it happens a lot in many kinds of lettering styles, in order to enrich the written word the scribe mixes the thickness of the strokes and the width of the letters. Like one of my favorite mentors say (1), they make thoughtful gestures Some lively strokes go down with a thick, while some do that with a thin. Some letters are very narrow, meaning some of them will need to be very wide to compensate. Why not?. The calligrapher is always thinking on the following letters, and he/she designs in his head the combination of thicks and thins before he/she executes them. He/she knows the playful rhythm the words will have before writing them. It takes time and skill to master this and achieve graceful results. Going back to the font, in Pantera, this combination of varying thicknesses and widths of letters were Open-Type coded so the user will see satisfactory results by just enabling or disabling some buttons on the glyphs panel. I'm very pleased with the result since it’s not very easy to find fonts which play with the words' rhythm like Pantera does, following of course, a strong calligraphic base. I believe that if you were on the prowl for innovative fonts, this is your chance to go wild and get Pantera! NOTES (1) Phrase by Yves Leterme. In fact, it’s the title of a book by him. EPILOGUE Esta fuente está dedicada a mi panterita