This font set is based on Frank Lloyd Wright's hand-lettering found on the Chicago Midway Gardens working drawings from 1913. This type of architectural lettering is a bit more casual than standard lettering found on most blueprints. It evokes the personality of Frank Lloyd Wright and complements the other fonts in the P22 FLW font series. Midway One and Midway Two can be used interchangeably to give a more naturalistic feeling of hand lettering. Midway Ornaments features over 100 decorative border elements that can be combined is many ways for surprising and effective decorative motifs. Midway One and Midway Two have been remastered and now contain over 400 characters including support for Western and Central European languages.

Piambis Family has been featured in "Slanted #28 Contemporary Typefaces 2016/17" This handwritten font family that boasts great variety of glyphs - many of which are fancy alternates for standard letters (click on text written in Piambis below, then click on “Glyphs”). This font is designed so the letters are available via standard programs ie. Word. It is recommended however that you use professional software such as Photoshop or Illustrator to make your work easier as there are over 1600 glyphs in each of the fonts included in Piambis family. About the family: The chief difference between the files in the family are finishes to the capital letters (in all languages) and appearance of the lowercase “f”. The fonts support all languages that use latin script - yes - Vietnamese (Tiếng Việt) and Pinyin is also available.

The DF Dudok is a minimal bitmap typeface which works very well in small sizes both on your screen and on paper. I am connected in a culinary way with the architects’ name W.M. Dudok. It was the first restaurant where I cooked under the critical eye of my chef Gerhard Braun. (Now La Stanza in Rotterdam) Well, it is incidently getting into my typeface work, the cook, the architect, his wife and...who knows

Bombelli is a font that looks like it has been handwritten by a meticulous architect in one of those hand-drawn blueprints of the old days. I chose the name to honor one of my ex-bosses -- a graphic designer-architect who taught me a lot of things when I was young and needed the money. One of the things he taught me – and probably the most important one – was to always be on time in the morning. He never said a word about me being late, but it worked. He taught me about being meticulous in detail and many other things I only appreciated much later. This clear and straightforward font deserves bearing his name. Your grateful type designer Gert Wiescher

At first glance, the lettering style of Technopen JNL seems to emulate the computer-age fonts of the 1980s. In actuality, this font is derived from an alphabet sample found in an instructional booklet for the Esterbrook Drawlet Pens. The Drawlet line was Esterbrook's answer to the iconic Speedball pen points sold through their chief competitor, the Hunt Pen Manufacturing Company. So, what seems to be late 20th Century typography is actually from vintage source material. In fact, the entire contents of the instructional booklet were copyright 1929! A few minor changes were made to the original A-Z alphabet and additional characters were added. The name Technopen is a shortening of the term 'technical pen', which is both a nod to the techno age of the 80s and the technical instruments of the past utilized for drawing and lettering.

Fulgora is a sort of ‘calligraphic typography’ or ‘typographic calligraphy’, depending on the point of view. Inspired by late-medieval Bâtarde and Civilité blackletter styles, the Kannada and Sinhala writing systems from Southern India, Celtic uncials, and diverse vernacular Mexican scripts, Fulgora was created straight from pen on paper as a personal calligraphic style where fantasy in the chief ingredient. The idea to take it to the digital realm came later, as an extension of the creative process. To this end, originals for each character were made, directly traced with the nib with no retouching, then vectorized to be digitally assembled. Work has been done on spacing and kerning with the aim to digitally reproduce an utterly calligraphic outcome keeping the natural, imperfect, manual finish of all signs. Fulgora has two variants: Blanca (white) and Negra (black), executed with different nib widths but the same style and proportions.

VetteLetters is proud to bring you the TpKurier-family. It is cooked up by our German chef Martin Lorenz currently living in lovely Barcelona! Chef Lorenz about the TpKurier recipe: “TpKurier is the second redesign we did of Courier. The first redesign in 2000, although based on a five-unit grid, was drawn completely by hand. Six years later we designed another grid version of Courier, and the TpKurier family was born. This version is completely constructed up till its last detail. We didn't want to correct ‘mistakes’ deriving from the use of the grid, but instead make them visible (see “S”). TpKurier is based on a very simple grid, composed a proportion of four units high by two units wide. A series of other links between them make it possible to form a font from this grid. We felt it was important to consistently work within these limitations so that any unexpected asperities would help provide the font with its character. Even though it is a rough constructed typeface it was important to us to design real italic lower case letters and not just a sloped roman (see “a”, “g” or “s”). The first family published contained a serif and sans-serif version of the TpKurier, with italic and bold.”

Smooth with the roughness and made from scratch, Miser sans serif font family was designed by Mislav Serdarušić and it's name is derived from designers name. Miser typeface blueprints were somewhere in the subconsciousness of the designer but have seen first light of the day in September, 2021. during the Covid pandemic. Inspiration comes from handwritten technical letters of designers parents and graffiti explorations. It comes in 12 styles (6 weights with pairing Italics) with all Latin European language characters which are in daily use(without Greek or Cyrillic). Designed in contemporary appearance with innovations on some letters. Basic ligature set is included. It is suitable for magazines, books and websites, various graphics and paragraphs. Miser has a taste of science, technology, design & architecture, sports and more, yet contemporary boldness but distinctive to regular and oval modern typeface shapes. A must have on your system.

»Prima Script« was designed especially for use in Menus and Cook-books. One of my sons is a chef in Munich and he was always bugging me to make a new font for his menus. I already designed one for him »Konstantin« but he likes to have new stuff every couple of years what I understood. So here is the new »Prima Script« (that’s what he said when he first saw the font). To give it more usability I made alternate initials and end letters as well as medieval cyphers. Then I did a couple of swashes and a handdrawn Sans font to complete the set. Have fun!

With its slightly rough edges, Thumbnail Text works well where lettering is required. Letterforms wiggle a bit here and there but are generally quite uniform. Characters are a bit imprecise - but not showy or bouncy. They appear more adult-looking than childish and are very legible. Put Thumbnail Text to work as drafting notation or on blueprint projects that need to be easily read. It¹s also useful when concept or sketch stage lettering needs to look serious but not highly stylized. You might experiment with it inside cartoon thought balloons or in callouts. This design is based on an old showcard style from the 1940s. It's been dusted off and reissued for modern use. A lowercase has been added for greater functionality. Thumbnail Text Regular is now available in the OpenType Std format. Some additional characters have been added to this OpenType version as stylistic alternates. This advanced feature works in current versions of Adobe Creative Suite InDesign, Creative Suite Illustrator, and Quark XPress. Check for OpenType advanced feature support in other applications as it gradually becomes available with upgrades.

LiebeTweet gives you countless variations of cute birds to reflect personality, style or mood. Every one of these nestlings is unique and special, such as the little chef, the singer in the rain, the bridal couple, the lifeguard and many more ... and of course, we did not forget to include the cuckoo clock and the owlet. Put these birdies on your website, your personal blog or your Facebook page. Or print them out on invitations and greeting cards. 90+ carefully crafted drawings are included in this single font and can be used in any text or graphics application. If you like this font, have a look at our other cute fonts such as LiebeFish and LiebeRobots.

Cupcake Cuties is a delightful and whimsical handwritten font that brings a touch of sweetness and playfulness to all things related to cooking and kids. Its charming letterforms, adorned with playful swirls and endearing curves, evoke the joy and magic of baking and childhood. With each character carefully crafted as if with a sprinkle of fairy dust, Cupcake Cuties adds a whimsical and inviting flair to cookbooks, recipe cards, children’s menus, and party invitations. From delectable cupcake illustrations to delightful kitchen-themed designs, this font captures the essence of culinary creativity and the enchantment of childhood, making it a perfect choice to create a truly delightful and memorable experience for little chefs and their families.

Our chef Martin Lorenz likes to mix cool and fresh cocktails - shaken, not stirred! You have to taste his awesome Martini or mix it yourself! To make matters more easy, cocktail master Martin reveals his special recipe: “The TpMartini refers esthetically to typefaces drawn with a pointed nib as the Bodoni or Didot, but with the clear distinction that it is obviously constructed by modules. The visual system for the TpMartin is based on a square 5x9-unit grid and three different basic forms with which the font and other elements are designed. The basic forms consist of a straight line and circles of two different sizes. The line can be extended, but the circles retain their related proportions.” One piece of advice: Don’t drink and type!

Mundane information—the sort you might ignore—often appears in the form of very simple, utilitarian lettering, devoid of personality, the sort of industrial lettering you find on old blueprints, park restrooms, and electrical boxes. MVB Diazo is such a thing. It looks like lettering done earnestly with a plastic template. The monoline caps—constructed from straight lines and simple curves—have rounded details as if rendered by a blunt pen on a topographical survey or by a router on a rustic campground sign. The MVB Diazo fonts are compact, available in two widths: Condensed and Extra Condensed. Each width offers four weights from Light to Black. The fonts are perfect for wherever plain and boring letterforms are required. All widths and weights are also available in two distressed textures (#1 and #2) that accentuate the industrial character of the design. Rough #1 is gritty, with finer texture for use at larger sizes. Rough #2 exhibits more damage, the roughness apparent when used at smaller sizes. The Rough fonts include alternates of a number of glyphs so that variation of texture is possible when letters repeat in a word.

Panforte Pro is the basic ingredient for any tasty visual feast: a prime-cut font family, deliciously readable online and offline, space-saving and organic, appealing to hipster consumers and seasoned gluttons. Hand drawn in easy big strokes, its a very condensed typeface that allows you to typeset easily long texts. Lovers of world cuisine will be delighted to discover that it supports over forty languages using the latin alphabet, spiced with hand-picked diacritics and comes also with a tasty side dish of greek and cyrillic characters. For all the nouvelle cuisine open type chefs, it features a set of proper small case character set and alternate oldstyle numerals, as well as a set of repeating letter ligatures to avoid that metallic taste of repeating double characters.

The Farfa fonts were designed for institutional use, commissioned by the City of Fara in Sabina, Italy. This project started from the study of the manuscripts found in the Abbey of Farfa, penned in a variant of the lower case of “Carolingian” typical style of that area. The Capital, ligatures and Small Caps, however, are based on the uncial writing that often appears in those codes and manuscripts. Farfa Abbey is a territorial abbey in northern Lazio, central Italy. It is one of the most famous abbeys of Europe. It belongs to the Benedictine Order and is located about 60 km from Rome, in the commune of Fara Sabina The origin of the Abbey is still unknown. Archaeological discoveries seem to prove that the first monastic establishment was built on the ruins of a pagan temple. The Vandals destroyed the first monastery in the fifth century. Only a few documents from the sixth-century prove the early presence of the monastic community. It had the heritage of Charlemagne (S VIII), the Lombard chiefs, and later the Carolingians, succeeded in withdrawing Farfa from obedience to the Bishops of Rieti, and in securing many immunities and privileges for the monastery. Farfa was at this period the most important monastery in Italy both from the point of view of worldly possession and ecclesiastical dignity.

Fnord is a contemporary humanist serif typeface, it is ideally suited for display purposes, titling, headline copy and branding. The family has been designed to be highly versatile, containing a total of 23 fonts. Each font features discretionary ligatures, swash alternates and true small caps. The overall design is clean and simple with a little bit of rebelliousness thrown in for good measure – Fnord does not conform to the traditional serif blueprint. Fnord’s design has been strongly influenced by the complex, thought-provoking and mischievous works of authors Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea from the 1970s. I was re-reading their work while sketching the initial letterforms and realised that some of the proportions and angles were coinciding with some themes that run through the books – particularly the numbers 5, 17, 23, 40 and 93, which are key to this font family’s spacing and geometry. I found it both very interesting and enjoyable to play with a specific theme and purpose for creating this typeface. I am sure you will enjoy working with it in your own design projects. Key features: • 5 Weights in 4 Styles – Roman, Italic, Condensed and Extended • 3 Additional Display Styles in 1 Weight – Engraved, Inline and Woodcut • Small Caps, Alternates, Swashes and Discretionary Ligatures • Full European character set • 680 glyphs per font.

Full Tolls is the younger brother of original Full Sans, Full Neue and Full Slab. Full Tools started with Social Media Icons. In the following days coming new icons. For example "Full Tools - Communication" and "Full Tools - Emojis" and mode. To take up less space and simplifying icons on the web and phone apps. All icons bigger 110% from another Full Brothers. Full Tools is the perfect font for web use. You can enjoy using it. EMOJI ICONS - Amazed - Angry - Beard - Crying - Dead - Dissapointed - Embarrassed - Evil - Friendly - Happyness - Happy - Hilarious - In-love - Indifferent - Kiss - Laughing - Lovely - Muted - Nerd - Quiet - Sad - Scaret - Smile - Stress - Sunglasses - Suprised - Suspect - Thief - Tongue - Wink SOCIAL MEDIA ICONS - Amazon, - Android, - Apple, - Bechance, - Bing, - Box, - Buffer, - Creative Market, - Crome, - Delicious, - Deviantart, - Dribbble, - Dropbox, - Etsy, - Facebook, - Facebook Like, - Facebook Unlike, - Flckr, - Firefox, - Foursquare, - Google+, - Grafiport, - Hi5, - Howcast, - Html5, - Instagram, - Klikstarter, - Linkedin, - Messenger, - Myspace, - Myfonts, - Opera, - Path, - Paypal, - Periscope, - Pinterest, - Plaxo, - Quora, - Reddit, - Rss, - Shutterstock, - Skype, - Snapchat, - Spotify, - Stumbleupon, - Twitter, - Trello, - Tumblr, - Vimeo, - Vine, - WhatsApp, - Wikipedia, - Wordpress, - Yelp, - Youtube You can enjoy using it.

VLNL TpDuro was designed by chef Martin Lorenz and Juanra ‘Wete’ Pastor. Its concept was inspired by an Albrecht Dürer design from 1525, which shows a system to construct a gothic lowercase letter. Following the logic of this lowercase construction, but not the traditional uppercase letters of regular fraktur (brokenscript) alphabets, some brand new upper case letters were designed. The 45 degree tilted square that forms the basis of the letters, is as square and hard as a cracker. And we love crackers. You can put cheese on them. The ‘pixel’ feeling of the downstroke was intensified by repeating the rotated square module as often as they could. All this resulted in a strong, dark typeface with a steady rhythm, with one foot in history and the other in modern times. It works well as a display typeface for short texts, headlines and logos. Music festivals and heavy metal bands should also pay attention. This is hard stuff.

Now available as Opentype font with extended character set, Coranto 2. It is originally based on Unger’s typeface Paradox, and arose from a desire to transfer the elegance and refinement of that type to newsprint. Coranto 2 has a larger x-height and in many places has been made more robust. Over the past 25 years newspaper production has seen spectacular improvements in paper and print quality, the introduction of colour printing, and vastly better register. Newspaper production still demands a lot of letter forms, but advanced printing brings out details better and makes typography more appealing to readers. For text type the newspaper is no longer an environment in which survival is the chief assignment. Today, newspapers are not merely a matter of cheap grey paper, thin ink and super-fast rotary printing, and type design no longer has to focus on surviving the mechanical technology and providing elementary legibility. Now there is also room to create an ambience, to give a paper a clearer identity of its own; there is scope for precision and refinement. One consequence of this is that newspaper designers can now look beyond the traditional group of newsfaces. Conversely, a newsface can be used outside the newspaper — not an uncommon occurrence. The update to this beautiful font family, Coranto 2, includes the addition of over 250 glyphs featuring full Latin A language support, new ligatures, 4 sets of numerals, arbitrary fractions and superiors/inferiors. Furthermore, kerning was added and fine tuned for better performance.

VLNL Beatbox is a solid tech heavy straight stencil-face with a lot of character. It was originally designed as a logo for dj Markus Schultz back in 2004, who rejected it. His management couldn't read it, or thought people wouldn’t be able to read it. But Chef Donald DBXL found the concept interesting enough to finish it and has used it in many projects since. It was the identity font for the Battle of Amsterdam, a talent showcase in beat boxing and other skills. Beatboxing is a style of hiphop music (beats) made with the mouth and a microphone. A box is a handy container to store stuff. Like food, or fonts. We use a lot of boxes at the VetteLetters office. VLNL Beatbox is best deployed big, like in logos or headlines. Or flyers, album covers, posters and signage. As a display and headline typeface it’s got a lot of character. We could definitely see it painted on the side of a tank, or an airplane. It’s heavy, but not at all dangerous. Use it without risk. VLNL Beatbox comes in two variations; Regular and Small (smallcaps)

Elegant and round Having harboured a desire for a rounded font within the Fontsmith library for some time, Phil Garnham recognised that FS Emeric offered the perfect skeleton around which to design it. Most new rounded fonts rely on scripts or other in-app automation to form their characters. For all their warmth and approachability, they too often conjure images of jelly sweets and sausages. Not so FS Aldrin, where every curve and transition has been crafted by hand, giving a distinctive look and elegant feel. Design highlights FS Aldrin enjoys wide-open ‘lunar’ counters and soft, tube-like terminals. These improve legibility, especially on backlit signage and screens. The open proportions and circular strokes are juxtaposed against a more serious technical aspect that exists within each counter shape. The lighter weights feel precise and efficient, perfect for notes on blueprints or technical drawings. The heavy weights are equally crafted but more playful by their rotund nature, and are perfect for strong headlines or packaging projects. UI icons A suite of 268 icons complement the typeface beautifully and extend the design language in all directions. They cover a range of commonly used applications and themes ranging from ecommerce to weather, and also serve as a solid starting point for a bespoke brand icon set or UI. In addition, born of FS Aldrin’s astronomical theme and playful nature is a special collection of space-themed icons, including rockets, shuttles and lunar modules (hint: if you type the word BUZZ with ligatures enabled, an astronaut appears). Earth to Buzz Buzz Aldrin was the pilot of Apollo 11’s lunar module, the one that put man on The Moon for the very first time. Early on in the project’s life, FS Aldrin emerged as the ideal hook on which to hang the font’s space helmet (hardly surprising given Phil’s fascination with space travel and astronomy). An approach was made to Buzz’s management to see if he would sanction the association. Not only was the great man himself happy to see his name on a typeface, he also asked to use it in his upcoming keynote talks, book launches and online projects.

Here I am, once again digging up 60-year sign lettering and trying to reconcile it with the typography of my own time. The truth is I've had this particular Alf Becker alphabet in my sights for a few years now. But in the typical way chaos shuffles the days, Buffet Script and Whomp won the battle for my attentions way back when, then Storefront beat the odds by a nose a couple of years ago. Nevertheless, revisiting Alf Becker’s work is always a breath of fresh air for me, not to mention the ego boost I get from confirming that I can still hack my way through the challenges, which is something I think people ask themselves about more often as they get older. You can never tell what may influence your work, or in this case remind you to dig it out of dust drawers and finally mould it into one of your own experiences. On my recent visits to the States and Canada, I noticed that quite a few high-end steak houses try their best to recreate an urban American 1930s atmosphere. This is quite evident in their menus, wall art, lighting, music, and so on. The ambience says your money is well spent here, because your food was originally choice-cut by a butcher who wears a suit, cooked by a chef who may be your neighbour 20 minutes from downtown, and delivered by a waitress who can do the Charleston when the lights dim and who just wouldn't mind laughing with you over drinks at the bar later. So Steak is just that, a face for menus and wall art in those places that see themselves in the kind of jazzy, noirish world where one-liners rule and exclamation points are part of a foreign language. As is usual with my lettering-inspired faces, there is very little left of the original Alf Becker alphabet. Of course, the challenges present in bringing typographic functionality to what is essentially pure hand lettering gives the spirit of the original art a hell of a rollercoaster ride. But I think that spirit survived the adventure, and may in fact be even somewhat magnified here. This font is over 850 glyphs. It’s loaded with ligatures, swashes, ending forms, alternates, ascender and descender variations, and extended Latin language support. Steak comes in 3 versions. According to your taste you can choose Barbecue, Braised or Smoked. It’s up to you!

AwanZaman has a three-phase story, beginning with Dr Mamoun Sakkal’s two Arabic styles and culminating with Juliet Shen’s Latin extension. AwanZaman started as simply Awan, a commission for a modern, clean, monoline typeface for writing headlines and story titles in a forward-thinking Kuwaiti newspaper. Awan was based on the geometric forms of Kufic script, while in phase two, a second typeface (Zaman) was designed to add enough calligraphic Naskh details to make it easy to read in demanding newspaper settings. Together these two phases give the typeface a warm, familiar, and progressive look, as well as an explanatory two-part name — AwanZaman. Since most editorials use typical Naskh headline fonts with an exaggerated baseline, Awan’s rational forms immediately distinguish it as a modern and progressive voice in the crowded field of Arabic editorial typefaces. As the companion Arabic typeface, Zaman has the same basic proportions and forms as Awan, but with many cursive, energetic, and playful details. And since modern monoline fonts are increasingly being used to set extended texts, more features were borrowed from Naskh calligraphy to expand the typeface’s use from headlines into text setting. When using the AwanZaman Arabic family, Awan (geometric Kufic forms) is the starting point. To add the sweeping, energetic personality of Zaman (calligraphic Naskh forms), simply activate an alternate character through the option of 20 stylistic sets available in any OpenType-savvy software. The two typefaces function as one file — the AwanZaman Arabic family — allowing users to combine features from both designs to transform the appearance of text from geometric and formal to playful and informal. The third phase of AwanZaman’s development introduced a companion Latin typeface designed by Juliet Shen to fulfil the persistent need in the Arabic fonts market for modern and geometric bilingual type families. Due to the Arabic’s monolinear strokes, AwanZaman Latin was destined to be a sans serif with a tall x-height, larger counters, and corresponding stem thickness to harmonise with the Arabic’s overall text colour and page presence. But it needed much more. One of AwanZaman’s chief assets is making the two languages look on a par when typeset side by side. Arabic and English readers will have a different sense of what that entails, but this type family defers to the Arabic — graceful and artistic with a good mix of straight stems and curved forms. Latin in general doesn’t aesthetically flow the way Arabic does, yet the tone of the Latin needed to mirror both the Arabic’s more squarish curves and formal personality of Awan and the undulating and more playful shapes of Zaman without looking outlandish. That need was met by creating some novel Latin characters, which are accessed through four stylistic sets the same way as AwanZaman Arabic. The alternates are not just clever in the way they look and how they echo the Arabic aesthetic, but also in harmonising the disparate languages and serving designers well when needing a balanced, bilingual text face with a warm and lively voice. AwanZaman is a clever, seven-weight powerhouse that makes extensive use of OpenType’s stylistic sets (20 in the Arabic and four in the Latin) so writers and designers can make the most of everything from a single glyph in display sizes down to dense text in paragraphs. As AwanZaman Arabic has no italic, neither does the Latin; contextual distinction normally handled by italics is achieved by exploiting the family’s seven weights. AwanZaman’s intricate OpenType programming supports Persian and Urdu, with features such as the returning tail of Barri Yeh treated properly. From its inception in geometry to its melding of two worlds with novel forms, AwanZaman is a personal labor by designers Dr Mamoun Sakkal and Juliet Shen, and embodies the TypeTogether ideals of serving the global community with innovative and stylish typeface solutions. The complete AwanZaman Arabic and Latin families, along with our entire catalogue, have been optimised for today’s varied screen uses.

TT Tsars useful links: Specimen | Graphic presentation | Customization options The TT Tsars font family is a collection of serif display titling fonts that are stylized to resemble the fonts of the beginning, the middle and the end of the XVIII century. The project is based on title fonts, that is, the fonts that were used to design book title pages. The idea for the project TT Tsars was born after a small study of the historical development of the Cyrillic type and is also based on Abram Shchitsgal’s book "Russian Civil Type". At the very beginning of the project, we had developed a basic universal skeleton for the forms of all characters in all subfamilies of the family, and later on, we added styles, visual features, artifacts and other nuances typical of the given period onto the skeleton. Yes, from the historical accuracy point of view it might be that such an approach is not always justified, but we have achieved our goal and as a result, we have created perfectly combinable serifs that can be used to style an inscription for a certain time period. The TT Tsars font family consists of 20 fonts: 5 separate subfamilies, each of which consists of 4 fonts. Each font contains 580 glyphs, except for the TT Tsars E subfamily, in which each font consists of 464 characters. Instead of lowercase characters in the typeface, small capitals are used, which also suggests that the typeface is rather a display than text one. In TT Tsars you can find a large number of ligatures (for Latin and Cyrillic alphabets), arrows and many useful OpenType features, such as: frac, ordn, sinf, sups, numr, dnom, case, onum, tnum, pnum, lnum, salt (ss01), dlig. Time-related characteristics of the subfamilies are distributed as follows: • TT Tsars A—the beginning of the 18th century (Latin and Cyrillic) • TT Tsars B—the beginning of the 18th century (Latin and Cyrillic) • TT Tsars C—the middle of the 18th century (Latin and Cyrillic) • TT Tsars D—the end of the 18th century (Latin and Cyrillic) • TT Tsars E—conditionally the beginning of the 18th century (only Latin) TT Tsars A and TT Tsars B families (both the beginning of the 18th century) have different starting points: for TT Tsars A it is Latin, for TT Tsars B it is Cyrillic. The development of the TT Tsars A family began in Latin, the font is based on the royal serif Romain du Roi. The Cyrillic alphabet is harmoniously matched to the Latin. The development of the TT Tsars B family began in Cyrillic, which is based on a Russian civil type. Characteristic elements are the curved one-sided serifs of triangular characters (A, X, Y), drops appear in the letter ?, the middle strokes ? and P are adjacent to the main stroke. Latin was drawn to pair with Cyrillic. It is still based on the royal serif, but somewhat changed: the letters B and P are closed and the upper bar of the letter A rose. This was done for the visual combination of Cyrillic and Latin and at the same time to make a distinction between TT Tsars A and TT Tsars B. TT Tsars C is now the middle of the 18th century. Cyrillic alphabet itself did not stand still and evolved, and by the middle of the 18th century, its forms have changed and become to look the way they are shown in this font family. Latin forms are following the Cyrillic. The figures are also slightly modified and adapted to the type design. In TT Tsars C, Cyrillic and Latin characters are created in parallel. A distinctive feature of the Cyrillic alphabet in TT Tsars C is the residual influence of the flat pen. This is noticeable in such signs as ?, ?, K. The shape of the letters ?, ?, ?, ? is very characteristic of the period. In the Latin alphabet, a characteristic leg appears at the letter R. For both languages, there is a typical C characterized by an upper serif and the appearance of large, even somewhat bolding serifs on horizontals (T, E, ?, L). TT Tsars D is already the end of the 18th century when with the development of printing, the forms of some Cyrillic characters had changed and turned into new skeletons of letters that we transposed into Latin. The figures were also stylized. In this font, both Cyrillic and Latin are stylistically executed with different serifs and are thus logically separated. The end of the century is characterized by the reduction of decorative elements. Straight, blueprint-like legs of the letters ?, R, K, ?. Serifs are very pronounced and triangular. E and ? are one-sided on the middle horizontal line. A very characteristic C with two serifs appears in the Latin alphabet. TT Tsars E is a steampunk fantasy typeface, its theme is a Latinized Russian ?ivil type (also referred to as Grazhdansky type which emerged after Peter the Great’s language reform), which includes only the Latin alphabet. There is no historical analog to this typeface, it is exclusively our reflections on the topic of what would have happened if the civil font had developed further and received a Latin counterpart. We imagined such a situation in which the civil type was exported to Europe and began to live its own life.

In March 2011, the Society of Typographic Aficionados began organizing a collaborative project that would unite the typographic and design communities. The goal of Font Aid V: Made for Japan was to raise funds to expedite relief efforts after the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Nearly 300 contributors from 45 countries sent in over 500 glyphs in a single week. Behind the scenes, volunteers Neil Summerour, Silas Dilworth, Delve Withrington, and Grant Hutchinson were up to their elbows in Adobe Illustrator and Fontlab assembling the typeface. The sheer number of submissions coupled with the complexity of some of the designs caused unforeseen delays in completing the typeface. The team not only managed the immense influx of submissions, it also had several technical hurdles and multiple content reviews to mitigate before the final font could be produced. Several months after the project was initiated, Font Aid V: Made for Japan was finally ready for distribution. With the help of Sogo Japan, all proceeds from sales of this typeface will be delivered directly to organizations in Japan, such as Second Hand and AMDA International (Association of Medical Doctors of Asia). Sogo Japan strives to help circumvent regular international charity channels and the inefficiencies associated with them. Thanks to everyone who participated and helped us spread the word about the Font Aid V: Made for Japan project. In particular, we would like to acknowledge the following individuals and groups for their participation and involvement: Jonathan Abbott, Rui Abreu, Frank Adebiaye, Tim Ahrens, Anonymous, Eero Antturi, Leonardo Aranda, Hector Carrillo Aspano, Danielle Atnip, Alejandro Cabrera Avila, Christophe Badani, Joanne Gyo Young Bae, Ben Balvanz, Cynthia Bataille, Priyanka Batra, Donald Beekman, Hannes Beer, David Berlow, Kevin Beronilla, Fabian Bertschinger, Nicole Bittner, Bart Blubaugh, Dathan Boardman, Andrew Boardman, Joel Vilas Boas, Konstantin Boldovskiy, Scott Boms, Michael Browers, Vickie Burns, Matt Burvill, Daniele Capo, Seymour Caprice, Mauro Caramella, Matevž Čas, Eli Castellanos, Sarah Castillo, Tom Censani, Pinar Ceyhan, Ivette Chacon, Hin-Ching Chan, Sarah Charalambides, Karen Charatan, Sinde Cheung, Todd Childers, Justin Chodzko, Felipe Coca, Antonio Coelho, Jefferson Cortinove, Alan Lima Coutinho, Nick Cox, Nick Curtis, Girish Dalvi, Christopher DeCaro, Thomas C Dempsey, Matt Desmond, Chank Diesel, Anum Durvesh, Suzie Eland, Engy Elboreini, Craig Eliason, Emi Eliason, James Elliott, Grace Engels, Exljbris, Hillary Fayle, Carol Fillip, Jeff Fisher, Scott Fisk, John Foley, Stuart Ford, Mathias Forslund, Brock French, Anina Frischknecht, Eric Frisino, Chiyo Fujimori, Kaela Gallo, Ayesha Garrett, Harald Geisler, Alfonso Gómez-Arzola, Adriana Esteve González, Richard Gregory, James Grieshaber, Grupoingenio, Kemie Guaida, Carlos Fabián Camargo Guerrero, Rachel Han, Erin Harris, Stefan Hattenbach, Magnus Hearn, Marissa Heiken, Georg Herold-Wildfellner, Jamie Homer, Ed Hoskin, Dav[id Hubner], Jonathan Hughes, Rian Hughes, Grant Hutchinson, Xerxes Irani, Masayuki Izumi, Jan Janeček, Hyun Kyung Jang, Julien Janiszewski, Dušan Jelesijevic, Cal Jepps, Meghan Jossick, Evamaria Judkins, July Twenty Fourth, Erica Jung, William K, Claes Källarsson, Kapitza, Asutosh Kar, Arno Kathollnig, Sami Kaunisvirta, Hajime Kawakami, Scott Kaye, Richard Kegler, Anna Keroullé, Bizhan Khodabandeh, Lara Assouad Khoury, Ilona Kincses, Becky King, Sean King, Megan Kirby, Max Kisman, Keith Kitz, Romy Klessen, Akira Kobayashi, Kokin, Kozyndan & Silas Dilworth, Atushi Kunimune, Andreas Kuschner, John Langdon, Ray Larabie, Jess Latham, Kelly D Lawrence, Matic Leban, Chien-Hao Lee, Bryan Levay, Enrico Limcaco, Andreas Lindholm, Andrew Loschiavo, Chris Lozos, Ian Lynam, John Lyttle, Gustavo Machado, Jonathan Mak, Ricardo Marcin, Jeannie Mecorney, Steve Mehallo, Cristina Melo, Martin Mendelsberg, The Midnight Umbrella Studio, Goro Mihok, Ojasvi Mohanty, Ahmed Mohtadi, Alixe Monteil, Veronica Monterosso, Dani Montesinos, Masanobu Moriyama, Misa Moriyama, Pedro Moura, John Moy Jr, Marc Marius Mueller, Shoko Mugikura, Joachim Müller-Lancé, Diane Myers, John Nahmias, Yoshihisa Nakai, Hiroshi Nakayama, Reiko Nara, Nathoo, Titus Nemeth, Nathanael Ng, Ngoc Ngo, Antoninus Niemiec, James Ockelford, Kunihiko Okano, Naotatsu Okuda, Toshi Omagari, Onikeiji, Ozlem Ozkal, Jason Pagura, Hrant Papazian, Brian Jongseong Park, John Passafiume, Patrick Griffin, Alejandro Paul, Vian Peanu, Dylan Pech, Rebecca Penmore, Peter Brugger, Jean François Porchez, Carolyn Porter, Andrew Pothecary, James Puckett, Rachel Hernández Pumarejo, James Random, Liam Roberts, Tom Rogers, David Jonathan Ross, Sumio Sakai, Sana, Stuart Sandler, Rafael Saraiva, Riccardo Sartori, Ai Sasaki, Yee Wen Sat, Agnes Schlenke, Giovanna Scolaro, Roland Scriver, Alessandro Segalini, Shawn Semmes, Jane Sheppard, Josh Sherwood, Paulo Silva, Mark Simonson, Luis Siquot, Greg Smith, Owen Song, James L. Stirling, Nina Stössinger, Tanya Turipamwe Stroh, Kevin Strzelczyk, Neil Summerour, Superfried, Shiho Takahashi, Shuji Takahashi, Yusuke Takeda, Naoyuki Takeshita, Bruno Tenan, Chung-Deh Tien, Tom, Ryoichi Tsunekawa, Alex Tye, Matthew Tyndall, TypoVar, Virginia Valdez, Beatriz Valerio, Tom Varisco, Brayden Varr, Catarina Vaz, Andy Veale, Yvette Claudia Velez, Marie-Anne Verougstraete, Abbie Vickress, Ray Villarreal, Pat Vining, Courtney Waite, Hoyle Wang, Viola Wang, Jim Ward, Grace Watling, Terrance Weinzierl, Robert Weiss, Stuart Weston, Kevin Wijaya, Dave Williams, Beau Williamson, Delve Withrington, Katherine Wood, Neil Woodyatt, Jesvin Yeo, Yokokaku, Kazuhi Yoshikawa, YouWorkForThem, Matt Yow, Charlton Yu, Yuriko, Ron Za, Jayson Zaleski, Víctor Zúñiga

Originally designed in 1996, Mrs Eaves was Zuzana Licko’s first attempt at the design of a traditional typeface. It was styled after Baskerville, the famous transitional serif typeface designed in 1757 by John Baskerville in Birmingham, England. Mrs Eaves was named after Baskerville’s live in housekeeper, Sarah Eaves, whom he later married. One of Baskerville’s intents was to develop typefaces that pushed the contrast between thick and thin strokes, partially to show off the new printing and paper making techniques of his time. As a result his types were often criticized for being too perfect, stark, and difficult to read. Licko noticed that subsequent interpretations and revivals of Baskerville had continued along the same path of perfection, using as a model the qualities of the lead type itself, not the printed specimens. Upon studying books printed by Baskerville at the Bancroft Library in Berkeley, Licko decided to base her design on the printed samples which were heavier and had more character due to the imprint of lead type into paper and the resulting ink spread. She reduced the contrast while retaining the overall openness and lightness of Baskerville by giving the lower case characters a wider proportion. She then reduced the x-height relative to the cap height to avoid increasing the set width. There is something unique about Mrs Eaves and it’s difficult to define. Its individual characters are at times awkward looking—the W being narrow, the L uncommonly wide, the flare of the strokes leading into the serifs unusually pronounced. Taken individually, at first sight some of the characters don’t seem to fit together. The spacing is generally too loose for large bodies of text, it sort of rambles along. Yet when used in the right circumstance it imparts a very particular feel that sets it clearly apart from many likeminded types. It has an undefined quality that resonates with people. This paradox (imperfect yet pleasing) is perhaps best illustrated by design critic and historian Robin Kinross who has pointed out the limitation of the “loose” spacing that Licko employed, among other things, yet simultaneously designated the Mrs Eaves type specimen with an honorable mention in the 1999 American Center for Design competition. Proof, perhaps, that type is best judged in the context of its usage. Even with all its shortcomings, Mrs Eaves has outsold all Emigre fonts by twofold. On MyFonts, one of the largest on-line type sellers, Mrs Eaves has been among the 20 best selling types for years, listed among such classics as Helvetica, Univers, Bodoni and Franklin Gothic. Due to its commercial and popular success it has come to define the Emigre type foundry. While Licko initially set out to design a traditional text face, we never specified how Mrs Eaves could be best used. Typefaces will find their own way. But if there’s one particular common usage that stands out, it must be literary—Mrs Eaves loves to adorn book covers and relishes short blurbs on the flaps and backs of dust covers. Trips to bookstores are always a treat for us as we find our Mrs Eaves staring out at us from dozens of book covers in the most elegant compositions, each time surprising us with her many talents. And Mrs Eaves feels just as comfortable in a wide variety of other locales such as CD covers (Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief being our favorite), restaurant menus, logos, and poetry books, where it gives elegant presence to short texts. One area where Mrs Eaves seems less comfortable is in the setting of long texts, particularly in environments such as the interiors of books, magazines, and newspapers. It seems to handle long texts well only if there is ample space. A good example is the book /CD/DVD release The Band: A Musical History published by Capitol Records. Here, Mrs Eaves was given appropriate set width and generous line spacing. In such cases its wide proportions provide a luxurious feel which invites reading. Economy of space was not one of the goals behind the original Mrs Eaves design. With the introduction of Mrs Eaves XL, Licko addresses this issue. Since Mrs Eaves is one of our most popular typefaces, it’s not surprising that over the years we've received many suggestions for additions to the family. The predominant top three wishes are: greater space economy; the addition of a bold italic style; and the desire to pair it with a sans design. The XL series answers these requests with a comprehensive set of new fonts including a narrow, and a companion series of Mrs Eaves Sans styles to be released soon. The main distinguishing features of Mrs Eaves XL are its larger x-height with shorter ascenders and descenders and overall tighter spacing. These additional fonts expand the Mrs Eaves family for a larger variety of uses, specifically those requiring space economy. The larger x-height also allows a smaller point size to be used while maintaining readability. Mrs Eaves XL also has a narrow counterpart to the regular, with a set width of about 92 percent which fulfills even more compact uses. At first, this may not seem particularly narrow, but the goal was to provide an alternative to the regular that would work well as a compact text face while maintaining the full characteristics of the regular, rather than an extreme narrow which would be more suitable for headline use. Four years in the making, we're excited to finally let Mrs Eaves XL find its way into the world and see where and how it will pop up next.